How to Tell the Difference Between a Police Raid and a Home Invasion (Hint: Sometimes You Can’t)

By Tim McAteer (Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsThe Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported last week on the story of a 59 year-old nurse, Louise Goldsberry, who found herself pinned down in her apartment during a home invasion. Fortunately, she kept a gun in her home, and so was able to defend herself…right?

Well, no, because the home invaders were actually cops, including the U.S. Marshal’s Office and the Sarasota Police Department, looking for a suspect in a child rape case. Goldsberry stated that she was standing at her kitchen sink, while her boyfriend Craig Dorris was in the next room, when she saw a man “wearing a hunting vest…aiming a gun at her face, with a red light pinpointing her.” She reportedly screamed and ran to her bedroom to get the gun for which she has a concealed weapons permit. She didn’t know whether to believe him when the man claimed to be a police officer, because she said she had no idea why the police would be behaving in this way in her apartment.

Dorris managed to at least somewhat defuse the situation, although both of them ended up in handcuffs for at least half and hour. Police found the child-rape suspect in a different part of town later that night. He had never been in Goldsberry’s apartment, and Goldsberry had no idea who he was. The U.S. Marshal who was at Goldsberry’s door, Matt Wiggins, admitted that the tip regarding the suspect’s location was about the apartment complex as a whole—they had no reason whatsoever to suspect that he was in Goldsberry’s apartment, except for this:

But when the people in Goldsberry’s apartment didn’t open up, that told Wiggins he had probably found the right door. No one at other units had reacted that way, he said.

Maybe none of them had a gun pointed at them through the kitchen window, I suggested. But Wiggins didn’t think that was much excuse for the woman’s behavior. He said he acted with restraint and didn’t like having that gun aimed at him.

“I went above and beyond,” Wiggins said. “I have to go home at night.”

This is a prime example of the First Rule of Policing, as defined by Scott Greenfield: Make it home for dinner. No matter what led to the situation where a gun was pointed at Wiggins, he intended to defend himself. Wiggins made a decision that, because the occupant of a particular apartment did not answer the door politely, they must be up to no good. As much as anyone may want to see child rapists get pummeled, this is simply a bad general rule.

This demonstrates another principle identified by Greenfield: police assume you know exactly why they stopped you or are pointing a gun at you, and may start beating you or shooting at you if you don’t do exactly as they say.

That’s the funny thing about not having the slightest clue why a guy is pointing a gun at you. The cops start with the assumption that you’re guilty, and therefore know exactly why they nabbed you. This bit of confusion can, and often does, lead to a problematic reaction.

Goldsberry is actually pretty lucky that the cops didn’t just start shooting, although I don’t think she should be sending the Sarasota Police Department or the U.S. Marshals any thank-you notes.

We are always being told by the gun lobby that we need whatever firepower we can get our hands on to protect ourselves from home invasions. What happens when your home is invaded by police who are in the wrong place? Do we have to live our lives as though, at any moment, police could break down the door?

“I was thinking, is this some kind of nutjob?” [said Goldsberry.]

No, just a well-trained officer who knows how to go after a man assumed to be a dangerous felon, but isn’t so good at understanding a frightened woman confronted with an aggressive armed stranger coming after her in her own home.

Wiggins offered the Herald-Tribune perhaps the most chilling statement I’ve seen uttered by law enforcement in some time:

“I feel bad for her,” Wiggins conceded, finally. “But at the same time, I had to reasonably believe the bad guy was in her house based on what they were doing.”

Goldsberry wasn’t arrested or shot despite pointing a gun at a cop, so Wiggins said, “She sure shouldn’t be going to the press.”

(Emphasis added.)

Why shouldn’t she be going to the press? Wiggins, at least from the tone expressed in the Herald-Tribune article, seems annoyed that he has to answer for what happened in Goldsberry’s apartment. I think Radley Balko sums up my thoughts on that quite well:

Photo credit: By Tim McAteer (Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Beware the Vampire Cops

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“Good evening, Officer The Impaler. May I call you Vlad?”

Police may soon have the authority to draw blood from you, even without your consent or a warrant, if they suspect you of driving while intoxicated. That was the argument, in its most basic form, put forth by the state of Missouri to the U.S. Supreme Court this week in Missouri v. McNeely, No. 11-1425.

The case involves a man pulled over for an alleged traffic offense, then arrested for suspected DWI when the officer noticed the “tell-tale signs” of drunkenness and the smell of booze. The man refused both breath and blood tests after reportedly flunking the field-sobriety test. The officer, who claimed in court that he read an article saying cops no longer needed warrants to draw blood (I did not make that up. Missouri v. McNeely, 358 S.W.3d 65, 68 (Mo. 2012) (“He testified that the article asserted officers no longer needed to obtain a warrant before requiring DWI suspects to submit to nonconsensual blood tests…”)), drove the man to a hospital and instructed a phlebotomist to draw blood. The blood test revealed a blood alcohol content of…….actually, we don’t need to know what it revealed, because Mr. McNeely moved the trial court to suppress the blood test results as a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, and the court did so.

Without the blood evidence, the prosecution had no case. Unlike Law and Order, where they start shaking down other witnesses until they can make a case again, the prosecutors here appealed the order to the Missouri Supreme Court, which also said no. The court cited the U.S. Supreme Court in Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), which carved out a narrow exception in the case of a drunk-driving suspect who was injured in a car accident. Because of the time required to transport the guy to the hospital, along with the limited amount of time alcohol stayed in the body, the police in that case were justified in drawing blood without a warrant because (a) time was of the essence, and (b) the guy was already in a hospital bed.

Missouri prosecutors, with the federal government’s support, have now taken this to the high court. They are essentially asking the court to apply the holding of Schmerber to any DWI investigation. In other words, they claim that the fact that the human body metabolizes alcohol, by itself, should constitute exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless blood test. A blood test, by the way, that involves sticking a hypodermic needle into a vein in your arm and drawing a vial of precious bodily fluids.

I happen to personally think that people who drive while intoxicated need a severe ass beating. I have physically obstructed people I knew to be drunk from going anywhere near their vehicles, and I have hidden keys from people. I have never sucker-punched a drunk person to distract them from trying to get to their car, but I have certainly considered doing so (the person in question, even eight sheets to the wind, would have kicked my ass.)

That said, I find the precedent of allowing cops to collect blood without a warrant, regardless of the circumstances, very troubling. I already think that “no refusal” weekends (which are actually no different from any other weekend) are bumping up against constitutional limits.

At any rate, don’t drive drunk. If you do, I might work up the nerve to sucker-punch you.

Photo credit: by Curious Expeditions on Flickr.

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