Shooting a cop, legally?

Good. No one should have a free ride when breaking the law or overstepping the law because of their "job".

Man, Rochard is gonna be piii-IIISSSED at you....

At the time of this legislation I was a voting Indiana resident and it is actually a response to a previous law, now overturned that made it illegal to resist unlawful entry into your home by police officers. So basically if an officer decided to stage a home invasion in your space, even if totally illegal you needed to fully comply and file a complaint afterwards.

There was an outcry and this was the result. Yes, you can defend yourself in your home, even if the aggressor happens to have a badge somewhere.

I personally think its great and I think that law enforcement needs a LOT more accountability across the board.

i read this as there being conflicting laws? on one end you're supposed to be compliant, but on the other you are able to 'defend yourself'?

So if police have a warrant and they break down the door you can shoot them dead? Fucking awesome.

I don't live in Indiana anymore but my understanding based on some correspondence with my former state senators this was overturned on review by the Indiana Supreme Court.

If you want the full story this seems like a good breakdown.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley...b_1596846.html

I am not a regular huff post reader and I am not sure what the political implications of following that site are, but whatever they are I am not endorsing Huff Post, just linking to it.

The relevant passage is:

The changes to the law resulted from a widely criticized Indiana State Supreme Court ruling, Barnes v. State, in May 2011. The situation that triggered the court case (an appeal of a criminal conviction) resulted from an 2007 incident in which police responded to a 911 call about possible domestic violence.

After Richard Barnes had a verbal altercation with police, his wife pleaded with him to let officers into their home. Barnes refused. The police entered anyway. Barnes responded by shoving an officer to prevent him from coming inside. Barnes was arrested, charged and convicted of battery on a police officer, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He appealed, arguing that because the officers' entry into his home was illegal, he was permitted to use force to prevent them from coming inside.

The Indiana Supreme Court could have simply ruled that as a result of the call, Barnes' state of mind and his wife's pleas provided exigent circumstances for police to enter the Barnes' home legally. Instead, the court went much further, finding that "there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers." The court even acknowledged that this unraveled hundreds of years of common law precedent.

The ruling effectively barred anyone accused of using force against a police officer, for any reason, from arguing self-defense or the defense of others at a trial. At the time, critics pointed out that with the ruling, a man who uses force against a police officer who is raping his wife would not be allowed to argue in court that he was defending his family. The battered spouse of a police officer who fends off her husband could in theory be arrested and, under the ruling, wouldn't be permitted to argue self-defense.

While those scenarios may seem far-fetched, a bad prosecutor sympathetic to a wayward officer could easily make them a reality, said Mark Rutherford, chairman of the Indiana Public Defender Commission. "The police organizations say those sorts of things would never happen," he said. "And you'd hope a prosecutor wouldn't bring a charge like that. But if a prosecutor did charge you, you wouldn't be allowed to try to convince a jury that you were defending yourself. And that's the problem."

The amendment this month to the 2006 Indiana statute, known as its Castle Doctrine law, corrects the problem. It does not give Hoosiers the right to shoot police officers; Indianapolis won't be the next Mogadishu.

You probably won't win - however, it is a decent defense.

That being said, the police usually announce themselves ** LOUDLY ** - give you a few warnings by means of a battering ram being slammed by some 5'7" fat guy with a flat top. They normally scream something along the lines of, "This is the *local agency* department, open up!"

The scared (or guilty) usually hide under a mattress, closet or a fat crackhead girlfriend's fat folds or run out the back door only to get welcomed by yet even more guys that can't wait to meet them and discuss the situation.

Did I fail to mention that Indiana is one of the dumbest states in the Union?

Fuck em. Let's sit back and watch this turn into a cluster fuck. However, the cops will win this. I expect a few notches carved into their belts.

If they have a warrant, then they aren't entering illegally, are they?

a warrant makes it a lawful entry.

Where did it say that?

told ya.... sorta.

Ever heard of a motion to quash a warrant?

What if the cop at the door, the investigating officer, lied through his teeth about material facts to secure the warrant? Should the law cloak him with personal inviolability because he used the forms of the law while committing a fraud on the court? Yes, sadly, it does happen.

reminds me hotfuzz.

Sounds like a step in the right direction to me. Anything that will make a cop think twice about entering a person's home for any reason is fine by me.

I've heard too many stories of cops killing people's pets and destroying property in the last few years over petty bullshit. It needs to stop and this sounds like a good first step.

The police announcement at the door is just bullshit anyway. They pretty much yell to open up as they are already swinging the battering ram and mere seconds before they burst in wearing body armor and start terrorizing the people inside the home.

Doesn't matter if they have a warrant or if the person they suspect lives there doesn't live there anymore. Or if they have the wrong address. Or if the person they're going after is suspected in some relatively minor non-violent crime.

Regardless of the law though, rightly or wrongly, if you shoot a cop they are going to kill you no matter what, that day or another day.

I smell something. It smells like....Tea.