Is it ever legal to fight back against a cop?

[smitbret]

I've dealt with law enforcement more than half of my adult life. You don't walk up to a neutral situation and put everyone in cuffs. You do it when there's credible evidence that something has already happened and there's a real safety issue. In such cases putting the likely participants into restraint is completely valid.

What is NOT valid is assaulting person's who were not refusing to be arrested. For instance, some protest situations, or the above cited instance where an officer left the immediate scene, returned, and then began an assault against someone without first reasonably attempting to restrain them.

Restraint/arrest is not the same as assault. The first is fine, the second is not.

So, it's ok to just restrain/arrest anyone and that is fine as long as you don't hit them or shoot them?

 

[smitbret]

Officer Ron Jones

December 26, 2001—MS

On December 26, 2001, police in Prentiss, Mississippi serve search warrants on two apartments in a yellow duplex. One apartment is occupied by Jamie Smith, named in the warrant as a "known drug dealer." The other is occupied by Cory Maye, who has no criminal record, and isn't named in the warrants.



At the time of the raid, Maye is asleep with his 18-month old daughter. After trying and failing to kick down the front door, police move to the back, and break down the door to Maye's bedroom. Maye is lying in the dark with his daughter, clutching a handgun. According to his trial testimony, he is unaware that the men breaking into his home are the police.



Officer Ron Jones is the first police officer to enter. Maye fires three times, striking Jones once. Maye's bullet hit Jones in the abdomen, just below his bulletproof vest. Jones dies a short time later. Police find only traces of marijuana in Maye's apartment, after first telling reporters they'd found no drugs at all.



Officer Jones was the only officer who conducted the investigation leading up to the raid, and apparently kept no notes of his investigation. According to the district attorney and prosecutor in the Maye case, all evidence of the investigation leading to the raid on Maye's home "died with Officer Jones," who is also the son of the Prentiss police chief.



In January 2004, Cory Maye was convicted of capital murder for the death of Jones, and sentenced to die by lethal injection.

+

Deputy Keith Ruiz

February 15, 2001—TX

On February 15, 2001, police raid the Del Valle, Texas mobile home of Edwin Delamora, where he lives with his wife and two children. As two deputies beat down his door with a battering ram, Delamora fires through the door, fearing he is under attack. One bullet from his gun strikes and kills sheriff's deputy Keith Ruiz.


Delamora had no previous criminal record, and his defense says the raid on his home was influenced by an anonymous informant who turned out to be the brother of two sheriff's deputies. Information about the informant's relationship with the police was suppressed at trial.


Delamora was eventually convicted of capital murder, and sentenced to life in prison. Police found less than an ounce of methamphetamine and one ounce of marijuana in his home. Prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty because of substantial doubt about whether or not Delamora knew the people outside his door were police. That decision sparked heavy criticism from Texas Attorney General John Cornyn (now a U.S. Senator), who moved for a law requiring the death penality to be an option in any capital murder case.

Time magazine would later report that people in the community were suspicious of the narcotics task force, describing the team's general attitude as "those task-force guys were Rambo wannabes." The same task force conducted the raid that ended with the death of Tony Martinez, who had done nothing wrong, and for the raid on the home of Sandra Smith, after police mistook ragweed for marijuana plants.

+

May 16, 2003—NY



On May 16, 2003, a dozen New York City police officers storm an apartment building in Harlem on a no-knock warrant. They're acting on a tip from a confidential informant, who told them a convicted felon was dealing drugs and guns from the sixth floor.



There is no felon. The only resident in the building is Alberta Spruill, described by friends as a "devout churchgoer." Before entering the apartment, police deploy a flashbang grenade. The blinding, deafening explosion stuns the 57 year-old city worker, who then slips into cardiac arrest. She dies two hours later.



A police investigation would later find that the drug dealer the raid team was looking for had been arrested days earlier. He couldn't possibly have been at Spruill's apartment because he was in custody. The officers who conducted the raid did no investigation to corroborate the informant's tip. A police source told the New York Daily News that the informant in the Spruill case had offered police tips on several occasions, none of which had led to an arrest. His record was so poor, in fact, that he was due to be dropped from the city's informant list.



Nevertheless, his tip on the ex-con in Spruill's building was taken to the Manhattan district attorney's office, who approved of the application for a no-knock entry. It was then taken to a judge, who issued the warrant resulting in Spruill's death. From tip to raid, the entire "investigation" and execution were over in a matter of hours.



Spruill's death triggered an outpouring of outrage and emotion in New York and inspired dozens of victims of botched drug raids, previously afraid to tell their stories, to come forward.



Still, the number of real, tangible reforms to result from the raid were few. Though the number of no-knocks in New York has by most indications declined, there's still no real oversight or transparency in how they're granted and carried out. And victims of botched raids still have no real recourse, other than to hope the media gets hold of their story.

=

Cop that threw the flashbang grenade should be convicted of capital murder and should die by lethal injection.

 

[BurnItDwn]

There are some situations where it's legal.
For example, if you are a bartender, and you decide that the off duty cop has had enough to drink, so you refuse to serve them any more liquor, and they start beating the crap out of you, you have every right to defend yourself.