4 ms·

This is why castle doctrines and stand-your-ground laws exist and should exist, imho.

pjc50 8y ago
So you can get shot by the police? Neither of those is ever going to give you the right to overrule a court order with a gun, and doing this in a country where people are routinely shot for mere suspicion of having a gun is extremely risky.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  It's not that simple. Castle laws and a high likelihood of any particular household being armed tends to result in the sort of shenanigans like described in TFA not happening at all because it becomes an unnecessary risk from the point of the people who are approving it. The (IMO) best example of this is abuse of no-knock search/arrest warrants. When you kick down someone's door in the middle of the night they're likely to shoot at you if they can. Yelling "police" won't be enough to prevent someone from shooting back a lot of the time because people don't generally have the best situational awareness after being woken up at 3AM by a bang. The police are well aware of that any no-knock warrant has a chance of killing on of their own which would result in a lot of questions being asked and a need to justify to the public their actions that lead to the death of the officer. Getting officers killed because you wanted to play cowboy when it wasn't strictly necessary is not something the police unions and professional associations take kindly to. No chief wants that on their record. This is why sloppy/unjustifiable use of no-knock warrants is rarer places where a large chunk of the population (particularly the lower classes) are armed. It's not about you personally being able to shoot back. It's about having the ability to and how that affects the risk/reward equation for the people calling the shots who have to think at the statistical level. Back to the article, a judge is much less likely to give the ok for some corporate lawyers, a locksmith and a bailiff (i.e. not a bunch of uniformed police officers) to go poke around someone's property if there's a chance that it could provoke an armed confrontation (which could end in a way that could come back to bite him/her). If Mr. Lackman resided in a "rough" trailer park in a state with castle doctrine and constitutional carry (which as an aside tend to actually be almost free of violent crime) I guarantee at least one employee in the courtroom would have giggled a little when the corporate lawyers described where they wanted to go and what they want to do. It would be like someone asking to release some tiny bug fix on prod on Black Friday, sure it would probably work fine and nothing would go wrong but you'd get laughed at for asking because it's just not worth the risk.
gambiting 8y ago
On the other hand - if the court orders a search of someone's property, I want it to be carried out. We can sit here and argue that the court should have never ever issued such order in the first place, but the law has to be followed.
- AllegedAlec 8y ago
  If the court orders a search of someone's property, it should be done by law enforcement, not be the accusing party.
  - palunon 8y ago
    In a criminal case, sure. In a civil case, law enforcement isn't involved at all (at least in old English common law based countries) I guess that why a bailiff was present - as an officer of the court authorized to oversee such matters.
    - AllegedAlec 8y ago
      So now we're giving companies with an axe to grind the judicial power to enforce the laws themselves? That seems like a really good idea.
      - gambiting 8y ago
        The what now? They are not enforcing anything - the court is. They took the matter to court and essentially said "look, we have all reason to believe that person X has our property on their premises, we ask for permission to enter those premises to recover our property". And the court says "ok, but in order to make sure there is no funny business, I'm sending an independent lawyer and technical experts appointed by this court to accompany you". That sounds absolutely fine to me, no? It's like if someone rented your car and didn't return it at the end of the rental period - that's not theft, or at least it would be hard to prove it as such, so at least right off the bat, it's not a criminal case. It's against the contract you two had though, and you would have to sue the rentee in civil court - and yes, the court would absolutely allow you to go to the yard where the car was kept, and recover it yourself - they would maybe send a bailiff with you, but not an actual police officer. Is that "allowing private citizens/companies power to enforce laws"? Of course not.

So you can get shot by the police? Neither of those is ever going to give you the right to overrule a court order with a gun, and doing this in a country where people are routinely shot for mere suspicion of having a gun is extremely risky.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
It's not that simple. Castle laws and a high likelihood of any particular household being armed tends to result in the sort of shenanigans like described in TFA not happening at all because it becomes an unnecessary risk from the point of the people who are approving it. The (IMO) best example of this is abuse of no-knock search/arrest warrants. When you kick down someone's door in the middle of the night they're likely to shoot at you if they can. Yelling "police" won't be enough to prevent someone from shooting back a lot of the time because people don't generally have the best situational awareness after being woken up at 3AM by a bang. The police are well aware of that any no-knock warrant has a chance of killing on of their own which would result in a lot of questions being asked and a need to justify to the public their actions that lead to the death of the officer. Getting officers killed because you wanted to play cowboy when it wasn't strictly necessary is not something the police unions and professional associations take kindly to. No chief wants that on their record. This is why sloppy/unjustifiable use of no-knock warrants is rarer places where a large chunk of the population (particularly the lower classes) are armed. It's not about you personally being able to shoot back. It's about having the ability to and how that affects the risk/reward equation for the people calling the shots who have to think at the statistical level. Back to the article, a judge is much less likely to give the ok for some corporate lawyers, a locksmith and a bailiff (i.e. not a bunch of uniformed police officers) to go poke around someone's property if there's a chance that it could provoke an armed confrontation (which could end in a way that could come back to bite him/her). If Mr. Lackman resided in a "rough" trailer park in a state with castle doctrine and constitutional carry (which as an aside tend to actually be almost free of violent crime) I guarantee at least one employee in the courtroom would have giggled a little when the corporate lawyers described where they wanted to go and what they want to do. It would be like someone asking to release some tiny bug fix on prod on Black Friday, sure it would probably work fine and nothing would go wrong but you'd get laughed at for asking because it's just not worth the risk.

gambiting 8y ago

On the other hand - if the court orders a search of someone's property, I want it to be carried out. We can sit here and argue that the court should have never ever issued such order in the first place, but the law has to be followed.

AllegedAlec 8y ago
If the court orders a search of someone's property, it should be done by law enforcement, not be the accusing party.
- palunon 8y ago
  In a criminal case, sure. In a civil case, law enforcement isn't involved at all (at least in old English common law based countries) I guess that why a bailiff was present - as an officer of the court authorized to oversee such matters.
  - AllegedAlec 8y ago
    So now we're giving companies with an axe to grind the judicial power to enforce the laws themselves? That seems like a really good idea.
    - gambiting 8y ago
      The what now? They are not enforcing anything - the court is. They took the matter to court and essentially said "look, we have all reason to believe that person X has our property on their premises, we ask for permission to enter those premises to recover our property". And the court says "ok, but in order to make sure there is no funny business, I'm sending an independent lawyer and technical experts appointed by this court to accompany you". That sounds absolutely fine to me, no? It's like if someone rented your car and didn't return it at the end of the rental period - that's not theft, or at least it would be hard to prove it as such, so at least right off the bat, it's not a criminal case. It's against the contract you two had though, and you would have to sue the rentee in civil court - and yes, the court would absolutely allow you to go to the yard where the car was kept, and recover it yourself - they would maybe send a bailiff with you, but not an actual police officer. Is that "allowing private citizens/companies power to enforce laws"? Of course not.