So this girl called the police on me...

[The Real Hawkeye]

Hawk and Insidious, great posts.

 

[insidious_calm]

Jeff,

You are not correct in your definition of seizure. The USSC defines anytime you are not free to go of your own accord as a seizure under the 4th amendment. Specifically;

The Fourth Amendment applies to all seizures of the person, including seizures that involve only a brief detention short of traditional arrest. Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721 (1969); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16 -19 (1968). "[W]henever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has `seized' that person," id., at 16, and the Fourth Amendment requires that the seizure be "reasonable." As with other categories of police action subject to Fourth Amendment constraints, the reasonableness of such seizures depends on a balance between the public interest and the individual's right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law officers. Id., at 20-21; Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 536 -537 (1967).

More importantly, the USSC says that any seizure must be reasonable in light of the circumstances. In this particular case we have case law that says it was not. Your insistence that the officers use of deadly force was reasonable is also incorrect. The reasonableness of the officers use of deadly force or threat of deadly force is also dependent upon the reasonableness of the seizure itself. If the seizure itself is unreasonable then no amount of force, no matter how insignificant, is reasonable.

You emphasis upon whether or not the caller was "anonymous", and what the definition of anonymous is, is misplaced as well. The court did not cite the callers anonymity as the relevant test in this situation. The court cited the callers credibilty as the relevant test. In fact the court went so far as to say that the caller insistence that a person was carying a gun unlawfully (implies a crime) is not enough. The tip must be RELIABLE in it's assertion of illegality. That is why the onus is on the responding officer and the dispatcher to determine whether or not a crime was commited and not the caller before a seizure is legal.

In this case the officer was wrong. He should be held to account for the innappropriateness of his actions.


I.C.

 

[mustanger98]

Like it or not, anyone not in police, fire or military service is a civilian. Get any dictionary out and look up the word civilian. This is from the American Heritage Dictionary Second College Edition:
ci-vil-ian(si-vil'yan) n. 1.A person following the pursuits of civil life as distinguished from one serving in a police, firefighting or military force. 2.A student of or specialist in Roman or civil law. -adj Of or pertaining to civilians or civil life; nonmilitary

The way I've always understood it, either one is "civilian" or one is "military". The military- in each branch- has it's own police (MP, AP, SP) and firefighter units. So non-military police and firefighting outfits must be civilian. I'm simply differentiating between those in police and firefighter outfits and "private citizens". Notice your cited definition did say "-adj Of or pertaining to civilians or civil life; nonmilitary".

LTC Cooper would not approve of people attempting to change the meaning of a word in common usage to further a political goal. That is a tactic our enemy uses and we continually decry it here when they do it.

This ain't about politics. This is about how we all who are on the same side need to be on the same page. This is about not having a mentality from the cops that "we're at war and you're just a civilian" as somebody else posted in one of these threads. This is also about private citizens not thinking of themselves as beneath the police who work for us. We who are not criminals are all citizens.

Civilian is not an insult. It means exactly what the dictionary says it means. No more and no less.

Re-read my post. I never said "civilian" was an insult. I simply said cops have no call to insult other citizens (as opposed to criminals) who are not cops.

I hope I've clarified this point.

 

[Preacherman]

Folks, I think this thread has degenerated into a Shakespearean farce - "much sound and fury, signifying nothing".