unreal
Via Tam and Breda, comes the tale of a deranged man getting stabby towards his girlfriend and her two kids. Kid calls 911. Cops show up. And wait outside the door for 45 minutes for a supervisor to show up to authorize a forced entry. Both kids and the woman were murdered with police just outside the door. Tam and Breda are right, you are on your own.
But what manner of man stands outside awaiting supervisor approval while someone and their kids are being murdered? Job and rules be damned, you fucking do something.
July 30th, 2010 at 10:00 am
People are stupid, even COPS! There is a change in many jurisdictions of a sort of totalitarianistic control like this over thier officers. Partly because they are control freaks and partly because they have very low educational standars for LE. In this situation you have what we call”EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES” in which is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS that crime is afoot behind that door and with children screaming one could accertain that under the exigent circumstances exception, one could forcably make entry and search at least to the scope of securing the premises and saftey of those therein. I have seen this backwards fucked up mentallity before in LE and there is no excuse for it. If the officer you have is so INEPT that they cant function in htat position, then they should be REMOVED from the position of responsability or from LE all together(I vote for the latter). PRevent crime today BUY A NEW GUN:)
July 30th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Did they think they were British police?
July 30th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Contrast this with the video making the rounds of the deputies entering the man’s trailer and ransacking his gun safe because of “exigent circumstances.”
July 30th, 2010 at 10:55 am
I’m not saying it didn’t happen like this but so far the only source I’ve been able find mentioning the 45 minute wait outside the door has been the Washington Examiner. I found mention of the murders in the Washington Post but nothing about the police waiting outside the door. Not sure if it’s because it isn’t being mentioned elsewhere and is being covered up or if the examiner embellished the story.
I really hope it didn’t happen like this but I’m not naive enough to believe it couldn’t.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Remember it was Washington D.C. cops who gave us the Supreme Court decision (late 70s?) that cops had no duty to protect citizens from criminals.
I wish I could remember the name of the case.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:45 am
I too noticed that the Washington Examiner is the only source on this. I’m also not getting anything on the local radio news. That is NOT to say that this story is false.
Searching for the name of the victims and the name of the accused I found out that the adult female was deaf. The Adult male was fired from the USPS (cue “go postal” jokes) and the other surviver was a young daughter that was related to the suspect and the adult female.
The self inflicted wound might have been a ruse rather than suicide.
http://www.wusa9.com/news/breaking/story.aspx?storyid=83222&catid=158
July 30th, 2010 at 11:48 am
Warren v. D.C.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:53 am
another local news story from March 22, 2009
July 30th, 2010 at 11:58 am
15 years ago, DC grocery stores used to have big DC MPD recruiting posters stuck to the front of them. Selling points? “Almost $30,000 a year, and you don’t need a GED.”
July 30th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Agreed!
July 30th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
It also says in the article that the police are not equipped to break down a door (apparently they all serve barefoot). They had to wait for the Fire Dept.
July 30th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
“Job and rules be damned, you fucking do something.”
Easy for you to say, Uncle. That’s what the public always howls after such an incident. Of course, the idiot public never gets involved in policy beforehand, and they surely won’t give the guy who “does something” and gets fired, another lucrative job with generous benefits and a good retirement. Got a spare $50k a year for the next 20 years to pay to the cop who followed your daft, seemingly emboozelated advice and got fired? It’s much cheaper for the public to just have another beer and move onto to something else to rant about.
I follow procedure. If someone dies, it’s on the policymakers, not on me, and I get to keep my job besides – it’s called being professional. Those who are not professional get put out of the profession, where they can be amateur philosophers to their hearts’ content, or at least to whatever extent they can afford on unemployment.
July 30th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
“Remember it was Washington D.C. cops who gave us the Supreme Court decision (late 70s?) that cops had no duty to protect citizens from criminals.
I wish I could remember the name of the case.”
The case is Warren vs. District of Columbia from 1981.
http://newbius.blogspot.com/2010/07/if-you-are-not-angry-about-this-you-are.html
July 31st, 2010 at 3:43 am
@ Chas: It seems to come down to a choice between sleeping in relative comfort under a bridge (if need be), or bolting awake at midnight in your comfy home with the screaming of victimized children in your mind.
Just from me, that’s no choice at all. YMMV.
July 31st, 2010 at 12:51 pm
You’ve obviously never followed David Codrea’s Only Ones series ……
July 31st, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Chas = typical f-ing pig.
August 1st, 2010 at 5:16 am
Dispatch told the cops that the call may have been a “prank.” There were no sounds coming from inside when the cops arrived, so the victims were most likely dead by then.
It is NOT like the cops listened to screams while waiting for a form to be signed.
Sheesh…
August 1st, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I work for the government in the fire department and we frequently are forced to break down doors to assist injured people and to aid cops in entering buildings. There is a policy that is in place that we must follow. To break this policy means losing your job and possible jail time. MY family comes first.
While you picture a cop standing outside the door listening to children scream, I picture cops standing outside of a silent home where no one is answering the door, wondering if the call was a hoax.
Do you want cops to have the ability to break down doors at will, or do you want the rules and laws to dictate when it can happen? It seems to me like some of you feel that the cops are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
August 1st, 2010 at 5:48 pm
@clint1911
From the linked article:
Yeah, because kids call 911 all the time to scream into the phone, and then when the police arrive, they sit on the other side of the door saying ‘No, stop’ because, that’s, you know, super-funny to kids these days.
1. Facts are in short supply in the article, but it would be nice to know what kind of call the officers where responding to.
2. IMO, the dispatcher needs to be reprimanded at the very least because he/she injected personal feelings about the call, when there was no evidence to support.
3. When you respond to an emergency call, you hear someone saying ‘No, stop’, but then no one answers the door, I would call that an emergency.
Note also that the police spokeswoman said officers “may use their own discretion” in and emergency, but a defense lawyer reports that “officers typically choose to play it safe”.
Wow.
@ divemedic
Wether I want them to have it or not, they already do, and historically have shown a great propensity to do just that.
or do you want the rules and laws to dictate when it can happen? Likewise, the police have shown that rules are indeed, meant to be broken.