Your Home is Your Castle......or Not

Since the War of Terrorism has begun, it has become increasingly clear to me and mine that police can and do determine whether you are allowed to remain lawfully in your home.
From weather events to hazardous materials to other police "actions", citizens are either made prisoners in their own home or taken against their wills.
I do not like the idea of police telling me to remain in my own home for my own safety as I feel I have enough sense to make that decision for myself.
This current atmosphere leaves me very unsettled and feeling rather negatively toward police.

www.clickondetroit.com...
(Includes video link)
In this case a man who was to be committed to a mental institution refused to let police capture him. (They did seem to have legal papers to take him in.)
It is not clear if he was a threat to himself of others although police claimed he has some violence in his past. (And that violence is not explained, so we have no way to know if the police were acting appropriately.)
The neighborhood was locked down.
They trashed the house, the garage door, the windows and flooded the basement. (How nice for the owners .)

In the interest of the greater good, the police, or perhaps some other authority, have the right to evacuate you from a potentially dangerous condition, to prevent you from returning to such a condition, even it your home is there, or to keep you from leaving your home.

In this case, it is impossible to know whether the measures shown in the video were necessary or not, but it is clear that there was a potential for bloodshed and I would presume that is why police wanted residents to check with them before going to their homes.

The incident looked eerily like Waco, one of the worst police operations I have ever even heard of, much less witnessed via television.

A couple of years ago, a resident two floors above me was shot and the police thought the assailant was still in the apartment complex.

I slept through the shooting and when I woke up later in the day and stepped outside for some fresh air a police officer was standing only a few feet from me.

He looked at me in disbelief (I guess he expected that everyone would know what was going on) then told me to go back inside. As I turned to go back inside, I saw the SWAT team in place around the courtyard.

I was told that I could leave, but I could not return until the situation had been secured.

I chose to stay home and relax.

Only one other time have I had something like this happen and that was when I was a child living in Mississippi and an oil well blew out near our home. We were evacuated for one night, until they could get the well capped.

I think in both these cases the authorities acted judiciously, but obviously, that is not always the case.

Hi

Your thread just reminded me of a great Aussie Movie called "The Castle"

It is a comedy but a true story about this very issue.

In Aust, this ideal was upheld in the High Court, thankfully. However, there has been nothing post Terrorism laws so who knows where we stand now.

I imagine most would expect me to come on and defend the actions taken by the police in situations like this. UHHHHH Not exactly...

While Grady is correct in that most of the time these actions are taken for the better good and to protect life and limb; the potential for abuse is tremendous and can never be ignored.

I would however suggest that a large part of the responsibility for overreactions in this manner, lie with the courts, judges and civil attorneys. Many actions we are now seeing by the police, especially large scale ones like the OP topic, have been implemented, increased and/or significantly changed in response to lawsuits filed somewhere over INACTION by the police.

Of course in the current atmosphere of "sue over anything", not much can be done to protect against frivolous lawsuits. However the individual jurisdiction the police are working for, tire over paying out the millions they do each year and so require the police to act and react in a certain manner to protect the city/county/state assets...

The cop moves you from the house and you can sue.

The cop does not move you and leaves you in harms way, and you can sue.

The cop asks you to move and explains the danger, but you decide not too, and sue because he did not MAKE you.

It's a no win situation for the police, but they/we have discovered that any action we take to protect a citizen, goes a long way in court to support our position during the inevitable lawsuit.

So instead of always placing the blame on the lowest common denominator, the police, maybe look at your courts, your judges and your local ambulance chasers...

Semper


[edit on 3/2/2008 by semperfortis]

I see your point Semper, I really do.

But, dammit, explain the situation, let the citizen decide, sign a waiver if necessary.
I am getting a little unhappy with this Nanny State crap.
We may be living in a litigious society, but it feels way too much like 1984 to me.

And, in the case of the OP, you lock down a neighborhood for 4 or 5 hours for a apparently contained incident, there's gonna be a lot of unhappy folks.

www.macombdaily.com...
www.freep.com.../20080228/NEWS04/80228079/1006
www.detnews.com.../20080229/METRO03/802290424/1412/METRO03

DTOM, missing the point. Really.

It's your home. You can snuggle up on the couch and watch Weekend at Bernie's til the cows come home.

George Bush just gets to listen if you call your sister overseas to tell her it's funny.

Wish I was kidding, but he does.

Recorded. Forever.

Terrorist. You have a file. Good luck flying!

RANT, I'm not sure I miss the point.
The government, be it the local police of the Federal gov't, is way too interested in citizens' lives.

I want to be able to curl up and watch WAB even if I am told by law enforcement to leave without cause, talk on the phone without fear of being eavesdropped .
I want to be able to defend my home from intruders and tell ATT salesmen to get the hell off my porch when they can't read my NO SOLICITING sign. I want the power company to respect my property when they need to access to attend to power lines in my yard.

And, I have a feeling the PTB will be just as keen to listen to my phone calls when Bush leaves office, no matter who takes the Oval Office.