Let us also not forget what specific police action started this case law to begin with. It, as it happens, was not a no-knock search warrant. The matter on the table is the police officers' ability to use force to enter a domicile and apprehend a citizen Upon Their Own Discretion.
I understand that, by definition, we grant police officers a certain level of discretionary power to make quick and difficult decisions that ultimately, and idealistically, keep us all safer as a society.
...However...
what this case law does is multiply the effective use of that discretionary force and protect that use by specifying any resistance as illegal, regardless of whether or not it may or may not be justified. Even if the entry was unlawful. Even if the "Probable Cause" or "Reasonable Suspicion of Imminent Danger" was completely fabricated or inarticulable and it is later proved that the officer acted in a completely unprofessional and dangerous fashion, the citizen who justly and reasonably resisted his unlawful entry is thus STILL, under current case law, guilty of felonious conduct and will be sentenced to jailtime.
SB1 just rights this wrong. It does little more than that. The current case law allocates, what is definitially, too much discretionary authority to the police regarding private property and personal protection laws in this state. What it does is ensures that if it is discovered that the officer/s used inarticulabe, unreasonable, or non-existent factors in order to justify forceably entering a domicile; whose wrongdoing is clearly apparent to the occupant who chooses to resist said entry, that the citizen resisting is in fact offered protection under the law.
~LT
I understand that, by definition, we grant police officers a certain level of discretionary power to make quick and difficult decisions that ultimately, and idealistically, keep us all safer as a society.
...However...
what this case law does is multiply the effective use of that discretionary force and protect that use by specifying any resistance as illegal, regardless of whether or not it may or may not be justified. Even if the entry was unlawful. Even if the "Probable Cause" or "Reasonable Suspicion of Imminent Danger" was completely fabricated or inarticulable and it is later proved that the officer acted in a completely unprofessional and dangerous fashion, the citizen who justly and reasonably resisted his unlawful entry is thus STILL, under current case law, guilty of felonious conduct and will be sentenced to jailtime.
SB1 just rights this wrong. It does little more than that. The current case law allocates, what is definitially, too much discretionary authority to the police regarding private property and personal protection laws in this state. What it does is ensures that if it is discovered that the officer/s used inarticulabe, unreasonable, or non-existent factors in order to justify forceably entering a domicile; whose wrongdoing is clearly apparent to the occupant who chooses to resist said entry, that the citizen resisting is in fact offered protection under the law.
~LT
