Blagnet.net

An anecdotal story about incompetent police and gun control

On the WRIF-Detroit morning show I heard a story from a caller about a ridiculous ordeal he went through as a result of his attempts to protect his next-door neighbor’s property. He called in response to the show’s discussion about Joe Horn, a 61-year-old Texas man (not an Atlanta Falcons wide receiver) who fatally shot two burglars after they robbed his neighbor’s house. Horn shot them after they had come into his own yard. Read that CBS News story, which has the very intriguing transcript of the phone call between Joe Horn and the 911 dispatcher. The dispatcher repeatedly urges Horn to stay in his house, not bring his gun out of the house, and not shoot them.

I don’t have much to say about the Horn incident, just these quick thoughts: I kind of think the dispatcher was right to discourage Horn from confronting them and certainly from shooting them, because deadly force should (ideally) be used only as self-defense when your well-being is directly threatened. I understand that a free society needs private citizens to protect their property and protect each other, but fatally shooting two people in the back who were robbing your neighbor, when your neighbor wasn’t home, seems excessive to me. But, on the other hand, I’ve never been in a burglary situation, and I don’t know how I’d react knowing that burglars were right next door and could come to my house next. I’d rather shoot too early, before they came close to my house and started directly threatening me, than shoot too late after they had already broken in, or shot at me, or attacked me with their crowbar or something. Or, before they had gone to another neighbor’s house, where everyone was asleep and owned no firearms to defend themselves.

Secondly, the two criminals were Colombian immigrants who were on parole…from previous drug charges. What a surprise: the Drug War ruins two immigrants’ lives by causing them to be arrested for drug possession/trafficking, a completely victimless crime that only harms anyone because it is made illegal by the monopolistic State, and it makes them desperate enough to resort to a life of real crime. But, I don’t know their whole story, they might be legitimately shady characters who have committed real crimes like burglary before. It sounds just typical of the life-ruining character of the War on Drugs, though.

Third, read this exchange between Joe Horn and the 911 dispatcher, after he had shot the burglars:

Dispatcher: “Put that gun down! There’s officers out there without uniforms on. Do not shoot anybody else, do you understand me? I’ve got police out there…”

Horn: “I understand, I understand. I am out in the front yard waving my hand right now.”

Dispatcher: “You don’t have a gun with you, do you?

Horn: “No, no, no.”

Dispatcher: “You see a uniformed officer? Now lay down on the ground and don’t do nothing else. Lay down on the ground, Mister Horn. Do what the officers tell you to do right now.”

They have special uniforms, so they are exempt from the actions and considerations that you might apply to ordinary citizens. I’m not stretching this to make an issue out of nothing, here. I know that the reason the cops were there is because they were called there and, proper or not, it’s their job to protect us against and investigate crimes. These particular circumstances are not what I’m focusing on; it’s the attitude that police officers are held to a different set of standards and (oftentimes) laws because they are official agents of the State and their uniforms prove it. The dispatcher is saying, You may have been right or wrong to shoot those burglars, but you aren’t of the same legal status as these uniformed officers, so you can’t walk around with a gun like they can; you can’t address them standing up and armed like they will be. (The dispatcher could also have realized that at the scene of a crime where two people had already been shot, the cops were likely to be prepared to shoot, too, so Horn better do all he can to avoid provoking their trigger-happiness.)

What do you think that 911 dispatcher (and millions of others) would have thought about this scenario: Two police officers had a house surrounded because there were burglars in it, and when the burglars came running towards the cops, the cops shot them dead, and then a few more police officers come to the scene. Do you think anyone would expect the two original cops to put their guns down, come out from behind their cars or from the vicinity of the bodies with their hands up, and then lie down with their hands behind their head, waiting for the new cops to tell them what to do? Obviously not. They are not considered ordinary citizens and are not held to the same standards that we are in many situations—in any situations involving crimes and shootings. (If you think police officers are unlikely to exhibit so little restraint and shoot people unjustifiably, please read this blag more often, as you have a lot to learn.)

Consider one other scenario: What if, instead of Joe Horn, the next-door neighbor had been an off-duty police officer, and he had shot the burglars just as Horn did? Do you think he, or the police who came to the scene, would have thought the off-duty cop needed to leave his gun in the house, come out with his hands up, and lie down waiting for instructions? Don’t be foolish. He would have said, No, it’s okay, I’m a cop! Or, if he lived in the same city he worked in, his own police force would probably be the one coming to his house, so they’d know him… Either way, he wouldn’t be treated the same as an ordinary citizen. You might say that’s fine and that’s the way it should be because the cops should be held to different standards, but I’d say, one, there is no moral or philosophical basis for such a double-standard, and, two, as long as you admit this is true, that’s a good start.

The point of this longer-than-expected early-morning post was to relate the story that Chris, a 47-year-old caller to WRIF FM, told on the air this morning. He was out in his back yard grilling when he heard something weird in the woods behind his and his neighbor’s houses. It sounded like lumber being moved or loaded or something. He got his bright-orange hunting gear on and took his handgun out into the woods, and saw three young men loading up a bunch of lumber and wheels and other equipment from his neighbor’s shed into their van!

When one of them noticed him (I guess he wore his bright-orange to protect himself against hunters or trigger-happy criminals or something…I don’t know, but they saw him when he got 40 or 50 feet away), the guy started walking towards Chris. Chris asked them what the hell they were doing, and they said they knew Mr. McMahon, his neighbor, and they had permission to be there and take his stuff. When the guy walking towards Chris got pretty close, like 5-10 feet away, Chris pulled his handgun out and told him to back off and continued asking them why they were there. The guy stopped walking towards him and started listening then. Chris kept the gun pointed at all of them, and told them they could all come back to the shed later that night or the next day when its owner was home, because there should be no problem if they have his explicit permission, should there? They didn’t agree to that, so Chris made them unload all of the stuff from the van back into the shed, and they drove off.

About an hour later, cops showed up in Chris’s driveway, confiscated his gun, handcuffed him, put him in the back of their police car, and locked him up in a jail cell for 24 hours.

What had happened was one of the guys he encountered in the woods had called the police to report what Chris had done to them—threatened them with a gun even though they had a right, had permission, to be there and take Mr. McMahon’s stuff. The police immediately and by default assumed that the man with the firearm was in the wrong, and so arrested him without an investigation and took his gun even though it was his property. (If ordinary citizens did this, it would be called kidnapping and theft.) Next, the police went back to the shed in the woods to meet up with these people and supervise their taking of this lumber and other equipment from Mr. McMahon’s shed.

Perhaps you can tell by the fact that I’m relating this story on my blag and by the way I’m telling it that, of course, these were criminals and the cops were completely wrong. I guess it was after Chris got home from jail, he talked to his neighbor McMahon, who called the police and said he had no idea who any of those guys were and in no way, shape, or form did they have permission to even be there, much less take his stuff!

The police released Chris after 24 hours—maybe because that’s how long they keep someone while an “investigation” is ongoing or maybe because they found out he was completely in the right—and it took Chris several months and $1500 to get his gun back, which belonged to him, was stolen by people who had no place to take it, and which wasn’t used in the commission of a crime.

Oh, and it turns out two of the three criminals were on parole.

A few closing thoughts: The police assume by default that the person with the gun was in the wrong, but the police will always have guns and they never assume one of their own is in the wrong. They stole Chris’s gun and held him in a cell for 24 hours, but not only will they not be charged with theft or kidnapping, Chris had to pay them fifteen hundred freaking dollars to get his own perfectly legal and justified property back. Third, if he did charge them with wrongful arrest or theft, they would never be convicted and would probably not be brought to trial. If he brought them to small-claims court for his $1500 in fines and fees, he would never win (the courts are part of the same monopolistic justice [sic] system as the police department!). The cops were negligent in failing to ascertain who these criminals were and whether they had any legitimate reason to be there taking stuff out of someone’s shed. (By the way, what balls those criminals have, calling the cops and then taking equipment out of this shed right in front of them!) And, lastly, do you think Chris or his neighbor would choose to subscribe to these police-protection and adjudication systems in the future, if they had the choice? Do you think many people would, after they heard about this?

Posted in Drugs, Gun control, Police/law enforcement