Erosion of the Bill of Rights continues...

I have a serious question - How long is a reasonable amount of time to wait before busting the door down? Thirty seconds? A minute? If it's a big house, do they have to wait longer for someone to get to the door?

 

I think they should had a proviso--if you're an LA cop, you have to phone first and make a reservation.

Chances are they'll come in shooting anyway. Yikes.


ASSOCIATED PRESS


LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County sheriff ordered an investigation into the fatal shooting of a 27-year-old motorist by deputies, who fired 70 rounds at the man after a high-speed chase.

It was at least the third time in 13 months that deputies had fired off more than 50 rounds at a suspect.

"Obviously, we have to look at this very closely," Sheriff Lee Baca said Thursday. "We will know the motivation of each of the shooters. . . .Because it is the heat of battle, it doesn't dismiss your objectivity."

Deputies began pursuing Carl Williams on Tuesday after they saw him driving erratically and tried to pull him over, Capt. Ray Peavy said.

Williams allegedly drove almost 100 kilometres an hour down an alley before plowing into a patrol car, striking a light pole and then backing into another cruiser.

The six deputies on the scene opened fire from relatively close range, killing Williams. It was unclear how many times Williams was hit.

Michael Gennaco, head of a sheriff's watchdog agency called the Office of Independent Review, said investigators will examine whether deputies needed to fire so many rounds and whether they endangered residents of nearby apartment buildings.

In previous incidents, deputies in January fired more than 50 shots into a house where a suspect was holed up. Last spring, deputies in Compton fired 120 rounds at a suspect and some bullets flew into nearby homes; nine sheriff's deputies later issued a televised apology.

 

The real problem is the bigger picture... the increasing militarization of police and the unnecessary use of SWAT raids when performing search and arrest warrants.

No one wants to hear this, but the main reason for the massive increase in COPS-style, blast-down-the-door raids over the last 10-20 years is that cops LOVE playing Rambo. They get off on this stuff. The SWAT team is for adrenaline junkies, and teams that once only rescued hostages are now involved in very run-of-the-mill drug cases. The results are very dangerous -- to cops and suspects.

There are almost always safer options ... surveillance of the house, arresting the suspect as he leaves the home, searching the home when no one is in it, etc. But those take time and they're not nearly as fun as busting the door down.

 

Flamin' Mo just nailed it.

 

Drunk driving checkpoints go down this road.

 

I said I could think of circumstances in which people would argue for that, not that they'd be right.

 

A cop sees an erratic driver changing lanes without signalling . . . drifting over white/yellow lines . . . in the evening . . .
pull 'em over . . . you've got probable cause . . . I see such driving all the time. I'd like to see more
cops on the road flag down such behavior.

Organized pick-off-the-drunks checkpoints? Less than enthused . . .

 

Scalia, writing for the majority, is happy to set his originalism aside and argue that the growth of “public-interest law firms and lawyers who specialize in civil-rights grievances ... [and] the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline ... [and] the increasing use of various forms of citizen review can enhance police accountability” all mean that the fourth amendment can be reinterpreted.

Am I just being paranoid or is Scalia saying here that the Fourth Amendment is outdated because of civilian review boards -- right -- and better trained cops?
That may be a lot of things, but constitutional originalism, it ain't.