Cop Question (food for thought)

[Kevin3824]

Ok I am really curious. This question is mainly for the cops an lawyers here on the forum. A few years back a guy was shot by police for reaching for his zippo lighter to quickly as I recall.

Now I am sure there was a lot more to the story then that but there always is.
My questions start with if a Police officer does shoot and kill a suspect.
It is my understanding that their own internal affairs looks into it. They determine if it was a good shoot or not.

First off does internal affairs hold the officer to the same guidelines as the district attorney would if one citizen shot another to determine if it was a god shoot?

If the shooting is declared as NOT a good shoot is the officer then charged with the same crime a civilian would be charged with under the same circumstances.

Basically if a cop shoots and kills an unarmed person simply out of reaction to one of their unexpected movements or for them even trying to flee the scene of a crime, The officers life nor anyone else's life may not be in immediate danger.

Is that cop charged with Homicide either first or second degree? If it is not a fatal wound is the officer then charged with attempted homicide or at least assault with a deadly weapon.

That brings up another point. If a criminal resists getting arrested passively by non compliance with the officers verbal commands then during the process of the arrest the officer strikes the criminal with their nightstick has not the officer committed aggravated assault with a deadly weapon? Is attacking a person with a deadly weapon (nightstick) not assault with a deadly weapon or could the officer not also be charged like a citizen would be with attempted murder as well then aloud to plea bargain it to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and do 5 years for that.

People who are not police that carry a gun legally and seek advanced training in tactical and defensive use of it can be looked upon by lawyers as having planned for a situation which in many ways is premeditation.

There seems to me to be a very large inequality going on here. When a citizen breaks the law they go to jail or prison and if a cop breaks the law they might get some time off or even lose their job demoting them to the citizen status.

In most cases it seems they stick up for each other against the investigators and they walk on most infractions. That kind of action promotes corruption.

If an officer does in fact go to prison they are segregated from the general population anyhow for their own safety and usually will not even be held in the tougher maximum security prisons either. Not many cops in USP Marion(Illinois), Kingston Penitentiary(Ontario), Millhaven Institution (Ontario), Terre Haute(Indiana), San Quentin(California), McAllister(Oklahoma), Angola(Louisiana), Florence ADX(Colorado), Pelican Bay(California), Tamms(Illinois) I am not sure there ever will be either. They tend to get sentenced to institutions more like country clubs then hard time.

I am not sure I have ever heard of an officer getting a life sentence or the death penalty at least not since the days of the old west anyhow.

I have however heard stories of police shooting at a suspect more then should have been needed. Personally I do not think it should take more then one standard magazine to eliminate a single bad guy. I have seen news cast that talk of 50+ shots fired by police during a shoot out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/nyregion/28shoot.html

In the above referenced case the four officers were charged with second degree murder and other charges but were acquitted by a jury in Albany.

Later 50 shots at Sean Bell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Bell

At what point will the courts see these actions as being criminal and treat officers the same as they would any other violent criminal with a gun?

If any of us was to do that even if we were witnessing a mass murderer in action we would not see daylight shooting a person that many times is uncalled for.

Meanwhile at least one of the officers in the first shooting here sued for his gun and his job back after being cleared of the charges. I guess he liked shooting an unarmed man and getting away with it and wanted to continue to be paid to do so in the future.

[VeryPrivate]

My questions start with if a Police officer does shoot and kill a suspect.
It is my understanding that their own internal affairs looks into it. They determine if it was a good shoot or not.

That is Standard Procedure for a Police Shooting.

First off does internal affairs hold the officer to the same guidelines as the district attorney would if one citizen shot another to determine if it was a go[o]d shoot?

Yes and no, Deadly force has similar guideline regarding fear of life, but police are not required to retreat. There are also circumstance where a police officer can shoot a fleeing suspect (suspect must pose an immediate and continuing danger to the public should they escape).

If the shooting is declared as NOT a good shoot is the officer then charged with the same crime a civilian would be charged with under the same circumstances.

Basically if a cop shoots and kills an unarmed person simply out of reaction to one of their unexpected movements or for them even trying to flee the scene of a crime, The officers life nor anyone else's life may not be in immediate danger.

Is that cop charged with Homicide either first or second degree? If it is not a fatal wound is the officer then charged with attempted homicide or at least assault with a deadly weapon.

Murder requires malice to be proven. The more likely charge for a death would be manslaughter.

[Delco Sig]

That brings up another point. If a criminal resists getting arrested passively by non compliance with the officers verbal commands then during the process of the arrest the officer strikes the criminal with their nightstick has not the officer committed aggravated assault with a deadly weapon? Is attacking a person with a deadly weapon (nightstick) not assault with a deadly weapon or could the officer not also be charged like a citizen would be with attempted murder as well then aloud to plea bargain it to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and do 5 years for that.

In Pennsylvania, it is unlawful to resist any arrest, even if you know it is unlawful. Additionally, officers are allowed to use any force necessary to overcome resistance to arrest a suspect. In other words, no.

[Steve in PA]

I believe PSP, at the direction of the DA, investigates all (?) shootings. My dept has been involved in two shootings and a member of PSP came to the station for the investigation. PSP and/or the DA has the final say into whether or not a shooting was justified. Not many depts around here have an "internal affairs" dept.

Just because it was later determined that the person was unarmed doesn't mean it was a bad shoot. The persons talk, demeanor and actions all play a part. In your case the person was reaching for a Zippo lighter, but the officer thought it might have been a gun. Use of force, to include deadly force is to be judged from what the officer knows or should know at the time of the incident, not what is found out afterward.

I'm glad you think you know how many rounds it takes to eliminate a threat. If there are several officers involved, there are several decisions being made to act. In a shooting, the hit percentage is often very low. Several factors come into play. Shooting under pressure is very difficult, reacting while being shot at is very stressful, the officer might be moving, the bad guy might be moving, etc. I would recommend you doing some in-depth research into what happens in a shooting, not just reading a very poorly written article in the paper or on the internet.

If the officer was cleared in the first shooting, what was he supposed to do, go work for McDonalds???

Your threads have a very obvious and blatant overtone to them.

[Robert Kayland]

I'm sure the exact specifics of the law would be gleefully argued by lawyers on both sides of the issue, and it's nice to think of holding police to a standard that would guarantee fair and humane treatment of truly innocent civilians, while saving the macho stuff for only the real "bad guys"... but let's be honest.

In the real world, it's the equivalent of Catch-22... the police can do whatever you can't stop them from doing.

The few people I've know in this life that have tackled with the police, even when they were right and the given policemen were wrong, didn't come out ahead of the game... and that includes one guy I knew getting beaten to a pulp a week later by several officers for "resisting arrest" on a trumped up charge.

Nothing seems to amuse police and judges more than the average citizen who "knows his rights"... up to a certain point. Push a given matter until they decide to take the gloves off and you'll do well to move to another state... especially if you ultimately win your case.

[GunLawyer001]

In Pennsylvania, it is unlawful to resist any arrest, even if you know it is unlawful. Additionally, officers are allowed to use any force necessary to overcome resistance to arrest a suspect. In other words, no.

What statute is that based on? I recall reading a case where a cop attempted to arrest a woman for refusing to open the trunk of her car as she stood outside her apartment. She ignored him and went into her building, where he followed her and attempted to arrest her, apparently for refusing to obey his arbitrary orders. At that point, she hadn't even arguably done anything that would justify a Terry stop, much less a custodial arrest.

She resisted, very effectively, and in fact broke his arm in the process.

She was eventually arrested (I presume by sturdier officers) and charged with resisting arrest and assault on the cop. She was acquitted of all charges, because the arrest attempt should never have happened, and without the unlawful arrest there would have been no subsequent struggle.

In other words, at the time of this incident, cops were not allowed to charge for resisting arrest in the absence of a facially valid underlying charge. "Lawful orders" must be obeyed, but unlawful orders can be ignored, including unlawful orders to submit to arrest. Has this changed since then?

I would prefer living in a society where police are not free to accost women in parking lots and demand that the women get into the police van, to be handcuffed and taken to a place of the officer's choosing for a thorough frisking. This is particularly true in areas where Political Correctness and the desire to have a pleasing blend of facial hues has resulted in a downgrading in standards, and some police have prior criminal convictions. Slapping a uniform and a badge on them doesn't make them better people. I've read that in Miami, uniformed cops were using marked police cruisers to transport drugs to the dealers.

[Delco Sig]

101 Pa Code §19.16:

Section 15. Use of force in self-protection.

(a) When force justifiable.—The use of force upon or toward another person is justifiable when the actor believes that the force is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting himself against the use of unlawful force by such other person on the present occasion.

(b) When force not justifiable.—The use of force is not justifiable under this section:

(1) to resist an arrest which the actor knows is being made by a peace officer, although the arrest is unlawful.

*snip*

[Bmarshall91]

to prove your point further lawyer... back in my younger years, when i was 18, a buddy of mine used to sell marijuana... i was sitting on my buddies porch one day talking with him when a police car pulled up. i was like oh man! we're busted.. and i'm going down too becuase i'm sitting on his porch knowing he has the illegal drug on him. my buddy gets up real slowly, walks to the car, pokes his head in the pass. window for what seemed like an eternity then gives the cop a handshake, and walks back to the porch. i asked him what just happened right there, and my buddy tells me, oh he just bought a nickel off me. yeah... to this day, my buddy walks a free man. so they weren't "building a case" against him, or anything like that... just buyin some weed... unbelievable. I am now out of that scene by the way... once i turned 20 i had enough and have been clean for 10 years... nice huh! But every time i get pulled over i think to myself... man... what a dick. (thinking back to my buddy and that cop that is.)

[LittleRedToyota]

101 Pa Code §19.16:

yeah, but i also remember reading the case gunlawyer was talking about...as well as at least one other one...where the supreme court said that, under certain circumstances, you can resist an unlawful arrest even if your state has a law saying you cannot.

i don't know what those circumstances really are, though.

here is some interesting reading, though:

http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/defunlaw.htm

http://politicalinquirer.com/2008/06...-and-our-duty/

[GunLawyer001]

101 Pa Code §19.16:

Section 15. Use of force in self-protection.

(a) When force justifiable.—The use of force upon or toward another person is justifiable when the actor believes that the force is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting himself against the use of unlawful force by such other person on the present occasion.

(b) When force not justifiable.—The use of force is not justifiable under this section:

(1) to resist an arrest which the actor knows is being made by a peace officer, although the arrest is unlawful.

I really have had no occasion to research this issue, but I would note the difference between using force to resist an arrest, and simply resisting an arrest, although the case I mentioned is obviously an example of both. If I run away from an unlawful arrest, I'm resisting, but not using force to do so.

I also have to wonder if there's another part of the Crimes Code that would offer justification, even where the use of force is not justified under Title 18, Section 505. I'd have to read the cases. But it seems to me that an unlawful arrest is hard to distinguish from a kidnapping, and we do have an inherent right to resist that. I doubt that any DA would prosecute a case against a citizen where a uniformed cop was arresting that citizen for an unlawful purpose, and the citizen fought back; even if the DA took it to trial, it's hard to imagine a judge and jury applying the law as written. The badge is not a license to grab random people off the street.

The real danger here is from criminals impersonating cops. If I sell drugs, then I can expect a visit from the real police. But if I'm totally above-board, and some scruffy-looking guys claim to be undercover cops, flash some ambiguous tin, and demand that I herd my family into the back of an unmarked van, must I roll the dice and hope that this isn't a kidnapping, or worse? We read about entire families butchered in their homes, I have to wonder how many of them began as "arrests", to compel the homeowners to drop their weapons and meekly submit to the fake cops.

If I ever get a client with the bad luck to have been unlawfully arrested, who defended himself, I'll have to research the issue in depth, and see how the courts have applied and interpreted the statutes. I'll have to find that case I mentioned.