The Glade 4.0

Unfortunately, it led to the death of an innocent man.

A situation in which they've put themselves by doing their job...incorrectly. That's the key.

If you want to play the "But policing is dangerous and difficult!" card, then they have to be held to a higher standard than a window-washer who shows up at the wrong building. There's a lot about this situation we don't know, and will never know, and I don't want my following example to reflect directly on it, so bear with:

The police are looking for someone. They believe the house to be, say, #221. They go up and rap on the door. A man opens the door. Now, police have no way of knowing what's going on the house. If the man is concerned for his safety, and opens the door armed with a gun, is that illegal? Is that worthy of capital punishment?

We'll never know if the man simply answered the door with a gun (completely legal, I assume), or if he opened it and brandished it about at the policemen while screaming about killing cops or what. But if he simply opened the door with a gun in his hand, does that deserve death?

Anyone getting shot and killed in this situation is a tragedy; completely avoidable and unnecessary, it only happened because someone **** up. Had the police not been at the incorrect house, a man wouldn't lie dead over it. My point is: if anyone absolutely had to die over this mistake, why should it be the guy on the receiving end of the ****, and not the one(s) who caused it?

Ok, well, reading the other part of the article, this man may well have been intending to shoot police officers:
http://www.wesh.com/news/central-florid ... index.html

Cops made the first mistake, yes.

First and last. And if you're talking about responsibility for escalation, wouldn't then logically the blame fall on whomever made the FIRST mistake?

Since when are you an expert in criminal behavior?

Besides, Florida is a 3 strikes law state.

A question to gun owners here:

Would you ever answer a unexpected, banging at your door with your weapon drawn? I am certain that I would endeavor to commnicate with/ID who it is before opening the door and be at the ready with my shotgun should it escalate.

Or for that matter, would you ever point your weapon at anyone you were not ready to shoot?

not a fair comparison. Police put themselves in harms way. Engineers don't.

Does your planning require split second decisions that if the wrong choice is made, YOU end up dead?

Surely you don't have to make decisions under such conditions.

Lets be fair in defining causation though.

Putting a glass on a shelf may be somewhere in the chain of events that lead to it falling to the ground, but putting it on the shelf didn't 'cause' it to fall--me shoving the glass hard over the edge did. You can chicken & egg it all the way back to the day the guy's parents saw each other across the room, and decided to get it on in the back seat of a Chevy.

But the immediate cause of triggers being pulled, was that the man pointed a gun at uniformed police officers who had their weapons drawn.

Probable cause/hot pursuit? (not sure what the law is but I don't think they require a warrant or are required to announce themselves in that circumstance.)

Driving does. Who here drives?

Try being a little more fair minded and not having your judgement so clouded by your bias.

Mr. Kettle, message for you from Mr. Pot. He says "You're black".

How does someone under the impression of impending threat, answering the door with a loaded firearm pointed at the people on the other side, not get off a shot before the people on the other side can respond to the situation, pull their firearms, point and shoot?

Something doesn't add up in the timeline.

How does someone under the impression of impending threat, answering the door with a loaded firearm pointed at the people on the other side, not get off a shot before the people on the other side can respond to the situation, pull their firearms, point and shoot?