https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/30/swat-team-destroyed-gr...
In this case, police in Colorado destroyed a man's $600,000 home while pursuing a shoplifting suspect.
And I don't think it is just the police. The pervasive erosion and negligence of privacy in American culture, in general, is the issue. Whether it is neighbourhood militias policing minorities, ring doorbell surveillance, gung-ho cops, government surveillance, celebrity stalking paparazzi or people on subway stations filming sleeping passengers or whatever else, there's a pervasive culture of paranoia and surveillance.
I'm generally of the opinion that police are too heavy-handed in the US, but in this particular case I don't think there was any other reasonable option. Moreover the ancestor post referring to the suspect as simply a "shoplifter" was inaccurate.
The same logic applies with high speed pursuits. You’ve likely got a helicopter in the air following them - back off a bit until things cool down.
But the role of the police isn’t to deescalate and once you acknowledge that, these decisions make more sense.
What is different?
”Desperate and potentially dangerous people in Europe are, therefore, more likely than their American counterparts to encounter well-educated and restrained police officers.
However, explanations of elevated police lethality in the US should focus on more than police policy and behavior. The charged encounters that give rise to American deadly force also result from weak gun controls, social and economic deprivation and injustice, inadequate mental health care and an intense desire to avoid harsh imprisonment.
Future research should examine not only whether American police behave differently but also whether more generous, supportive and therapeutic policies in Europe ensure that fewer people become desperate enough to summon, provoke or resist their less dangerous police.”
The flip side of this ad absurdist argument is that if a suspect holed up in MoMA, it’s okay to burn it down because he shot three of the maybe fifteen bullets he has in his possession? No, no it is not.
That sounds perfectly fine and reasonable to me.
> and risk being shot
I'm certain they will be able to wait far enough away where getting shot isn't really an option.
When I was growing up, the Sheriff initiated a big chase and SWAT response for some dumbass kid who rode an ATV on the road. The end result was an accident that killed the kid and severely injured a deputy (who IIRC wasn’t even involved in the incident response), who was unable to work again.
All that tragedy, for what?
If you read the articles, yes, it was triggered from a shoplifting incident.
Well, given that they don't have to pay for the house it's a actually a no brainer! (That should probably be fixed).
No, you let the police do what they need to do AND you have them pay the homeowner for damages. The government should have some sort of insurance for this.
It’s called the power to collect taxes. And print money if it’s the federal government.
Also, yeah, being proportional in your response (and that includes putting property damage into your calculation about what’s proportional) is always useful.
I think people are just as mortified over the 1985 case where Philadelphia police firebombed a drug den and burnt down an entire block of lower-income housing. The police should pay for collateral damage, because it forces the public to reevaluate what kind of police action is worth the trouble of violence and destruction (versus earlier social interventions).
Likewise, if you find it offensive that police would be more careful with a wealthy property owner's possessions than with others, maybe that should prompt a reevalution of what kinds of wealth disparities are acceptable.
>The incident started when an Aurora police officer attempted to lead Seacat into an office at a Walmart, where he was suspected of shoplifting. But Seacat ran to a Lexus in the parking lot, jumped in and fled.
So they caused $670,000 of damage to protect Walmart from shoplifting. Not great ROI for the community.
All of that is beside the point, anyway. The point is that the government should be paying for that house.
Arguably the police officer did his job, perhaps even bending over backward to protect the suspect's rights. Though, a more traditional "alright, buddy, put your hands up, you're under arrest!" at gunpoint might have forestalled the ensuing situation.
Absolutely agree that the homeowner should get some kind of redress for what was done to his home.
> resisting arrest and disobeying a police officer
Mercy me, how dare he. He definitely deserves the electric chair for that.
> probably several other charges (home invasion too?).
After being identified as a criminal because of the original shoplifting attempt, it's now okay to concoct a laundry list of potential new crimes just to make sure the cops can really throw the book at this degenerate. They're now entirely justified in ramming a military tank through a house while a hundred other cops watch the show.
I presume that an officer doing their job would have been able to let the shoplifter run off and, because they'd identified him and the stolen car, they could issue a warrant and pick him up later.
The entire saga screams incompetence and "he had a gun" is a terrible excuse. The whole point is to de-escalate, not one-up them.
The police in the US have a deep, institutional problem with how they serve their communities, and it infests (if indeed it isn't fed by) many aspects of the wider country's culture. It's both sad and infuriating to read about when you see that we don't have any of these issues in other western countries.
But we're kind of off the main topic which is Google tracking and geo-fencing :)
there is not a single situation where the police acted in good faith here.
Let him run off? That's not really how policing works, at least not in the U.S. The police see someone commit a crime, they're obligated to pursue him, unless ordered to stand down or they're forced to triage because another's life is in danger etc.
It seems to me that there's one wrongdoer here and that's the shoplifter/home invader/gunman. That said, yeah, perhaps they shouldn't have called SWAT but on the other hand, according to the article they tried to negotiate for 5 hours, then he fired shots. Not sure what else they could do but fire back.
Even if you follow this logic and believe it to be true, the police decided that putting an innocent homeowner out of a house and over half a million bucks, plus the cost of all the officers spectating, and the cost of rolling out a tank, was worth it to recover a few dollars of lost income for Walmart.
If that’s your point of view, why pursue the shoplifter in the first place? Could’ve just used that line against Walmart and saved everyone a lot of hassle.
The police, or let's say, the government, or maybe just the populace in general, do have a duty to catch criminals and not just let them rampage about the neighborhood. Doing something about the guy after cornering him in a house is not an elective procedure.
Now maybe there's an argument to be made that the officers risking their lives to arrest the guy should have risked their lives differently, in consideration of the homeowner's finances. I haven't ever tracked down a suspect, gotten shot at, or planned a home invasion against a prepared defender, so I'm not equipped to have that argument.
You might consider an analogous situation. What if a toddler crawls into somebody's unlocked car during a heat wave, gets locked inside, and the police break into the car to rescue the toddler? Who's responsible for paying for the damage to the car? It's neither the police nor the car owner. The toddler's parents are responsible. It's the same as the situation where a gunman holes up in a house. The only basis for requiring the police to pay for breaking the window is some sort of fuck-the-police mentality, which people are applying to the situation where they tracked down an armed suspect.
I’m shocked at the number of people talking authoritatively about this case and yet forget the basics of home ownership..
Insurance companies pay very quickly when policy holder get lawyers.