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GrizzlyBear -> RE: Too Rough, Or Doing His JOb? (7/5/2007 12:05:39 PM)
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This is the law in most, but not all, states. Be sure and check your state laws. The real key to this in the "breaking" part of the phrase. If your doors and windows are closed and locked and someone breaks them down, it is entering in what the laws often refer to as a "violent and tumultuous manner". If they break down the door, or break out a window, you are entitled to assume that their intent is to commit a violent felony on your person, and you are entitled to use deadly force to stop them. Just don't shoot through the door. Wait till they are inside.
If you leave your door unlocked and someone opens it and walks in, you are NOT allowed to presume they intend to commit a violent felony, and you are NOT entitled to use deadly force, unless they threaten you in other ways such as with a weapon or by demonstrating the intent to take away yours.
I can think of few weapons that an assailant might carry that are not deadly weapons. There is no difference between them having a club, and having a gun, save the necessity for having the opportunity to use it, i.e. they have to be close enough and show intent. A skateboard would certainly qualify as a deadly weapon, if intent were shown to use it as such. Lifting it in such a way as to able to swing it would demonstrate that.
Anyone who thinks that skateboarders on a busy public sidewalk are not a threat to public safety has never been faced with 3 or 4 of them abreast coming at you at 10-15 miles an hour, nor been nearly knocked down coming out of a doorway as one whizzes by a few inches away. A collision in a circumstance like that can have deadly consequences. It basically consists of reckless or negligent endangerment, and is no more a minor infraction than riding a motorcycle at similar speed on that sidewalk would be.
There may have been problems with groups of skateboarders and complaints about them; the police might have been told to make a greater effort to enforce the skateboard law, Or the officer might even have witnessed the group involved endangering the safety of pedestrians.
He did pretty much as he was trained to do, he used minimum physical force to subdue potentially armed offenders who were resisting arrest or attempting to escape. I saw no strangling, just submission holds. He did not use his baton, or draw his gun, or spray mace indiscriminately. My vote, he did just fine. But I see I am in the minority.
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