Cops go to wrong house then shoot the home owner.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: SlapMonkey

I fail to understand your point of view for one simple reason. If a person has committed no crime, the law and its agents should not be able to compel them to do a damned thing, least of all on their own property.

And this is where you misunderstand American law, apparently. While I don't know for sure about this particular jurisdiction, in MOST states, it is a crime to brandish a firearm in a threatening manner. "Threatening" is dependent upon the perception of the threatened individual, in most cases. In this instance, there was obviously enough time for officers to (presumably) identify themselves as officers and to order the homeowner to put down his weapon. If the homeowner fails to do so, then he has become a threat.

The police dispatchers may be the ones at fault, but you cannot tell me there is anything in the least bit constitutional about a police agent being able to walk onto a mans property, order him to put down his weapon and then shoot him when he fails to do so speedily. Sounds more like a heap of crap to me.

Yes, there is something constitutional about unintentionally going onto an innocent person's property, them meeting you with a gun, refusing to put down said gun after you have a legal authority to order them to do so, and then firing on the individual because they became a threat when they didn't listen to said order.

I wish that we had video, or witnesses, or a timeline as to how long this encounter lasted before a shot was fired, but we don't. I'm assuming that these officers gave him more than one chance to lay down his weapon--at least, I hope that they did. Either way, you MUST keep in mind that these officers assumed that (a) they were at the correct house, and (b) that there may be a victim of gun violence inside the home, because that is the information that they had. On top of that, this innocent homeowner just happened to be a gun owner and walked out with his firearm in his hand. This is admittedly (and excuse the term) a comedy of errors, but the officers acted appropriately given what they thought that they knew.

This may be one of those subjects where I have unpleasant points of view, or ones you disagree with, but in my view only a police agency which operates a hell of a lot closer to perfectly, than the one referenced in the OP, ought to have the power to issue a bloody parking ticket, leave alone deploy lethal force.

I don't think that it's that you just have an unpleasant view, I think that you are (in a strict definition-use of the word) ignorant as to the training and procedures when you are in a law-enforcement position. What should they have done, just taken the man's word for it that nothing was going on? Had he put down his weapon and let the officers detain him while they cleared the home, everything most likely would have turned out perfectly fine. Obviously, that's not what happened, and to place the blame solely on the shoulders of the LEO who pulled the trigger is not only unfair given the situation, but seemingly driven by a bit of ideological expectation that doesn't match the real world, in this instance.

But like I said--I wish that we had more information overall, but we don't, so my assumptions and assessment could end up being proven incorrect if more information comes out and it turns out that the officers were acting recklessly. I'm only going off of what I've read from the OP, and that indicates that, like I said, this was a comedy of errors that unfortunately ended with a homeowner taking a bullet in the neck. It's not a good situation all around, but I really don't think that there was any intent by the officers to trample on this innocent man's rights on his property while letting the actual incident (911 call incident) continue to happen without LEO intervention, just for kicks and giggles.

originally posted by: TzarChasm

Is this officer being charged for murder?

Henry County? Surely you jest.

I expect P-BAG and APOA to hit the news with stories of how the guy came out of the house throwing spinning wheel kicks and shooting fully automatic weapons at them, whilst bags of coc aine were stapled to his body and mutilated orphans ran out of the house to safety.

These guys won't get reprimands, much less be charged with something.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

Given the amount of weaseling you added in, I bet you're envisioning what happened pretty much the way I do.

But, there won't be any video, even if there was, and their stories will match perfectly, and they will give the story of an evil, disobedient bastard who was given a dozen chances to put down his weapon, then he pointed it at them, et al.

In a story where the guy was also the bad guy, that might fly. But they'll do it even when it's an innocent bystander, because THEY aren't going to be punished for this. I can't WAIT to hear it. I'm sure there are some panicked PBAGgers going through the guy's NCIC desperately looking for something they can bring up. "He was accused of smoking dope 35 years ago!"

a reply to: gladtobehere

Someone coming to the door at night, claiming to be cops, when the man hadn't called and had no problems, is a potential threat. He had every right to bring a gun to the door, and they had no right to demand he not defend himself.

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

Except nobody went to any door. The victim was outside in his garage and driveway when contact was made.

Why do people just make up a different story and then run with it? I don't understand that. At all. Either you didn't read the article and just guessed what happened or you did read the article but decided to substitute your own story. Conversation and debate works better when people stick to actual facts and information, not whatever they come up with on the fly.

Looks like the victim has died.

The Stockbridge man who was shot in the neck by police as they responded to the wrong address on a 911 call died Thursday afternoon, a family member said.

SOURCE

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

Except nobody went to any door. The victim was outside in his garage and driveway when contact was made.

Why do people just make up a different story and then run with it? I don't understand that. At all. Either you didn't read the article and just guessed what happened or you did read the article but decided to substitute your own story. Conversation and debate works better when people stick to actual facts and information, not whatever they come up with on the fly.

So they came up to him in his garage. The article I read wasn't in the OP, as I'd read about the case before this thread. That one simply stated they went to the wrong place.

link to that article

Either way, he has a right to self defense. Armed guys, uniforms or no, coming up to you in your home, when you aren't a criminal and aren't going anything wrong, is a valid reason to want to be armed yourself.

Bit surprised; you don't usually jump to conclusions like that.

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

What conclusion did I leap to? Multiple articles said he was shot in his driveway. Ergo, not inside his residence. I don't see any other conclusion to come to about it.

The article in the OP said he was outside. If you read an article earlier, how am I to know you're using that and not the one in the OP?

And a little more news comes out -

A preliminary review of the 911 call indicates the three officers who responded had gone to the wrong home and showed up at Powell's house, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

...

Powell had grabbed the gun for protection, not knowing who might be outside in the dark of night, Martin said. A nearby home had been burglarized just two weeks before the shooting, he added.

...

The officers "gave verbal commands for Powell to drop his handgun which he did not comply with," GBI agent Scott Dutton said in a statement.

But his wife, who was standing outside in the garage area, near her husband, never heard the officers say a word, Martin said.

"First thing she heard was two shots, her husband fell, she ran back into the house, locked the door and called 911," he said. "She saw her husband fall, and was terrified."

Powell had just left the house, opened the garage door and walked just outside the garage when he was shot, Martin said.

...

It wasn't known Friday whether the officers were wearing body cameras or whether any other video captured part of what transpired. Smith referred questions about the case to the GBI.

Here

Amazing! The wife says he stepped outside, bang bang, not even a spotlight and a dropit before they killed him. Much less identification.

And this is a 'good guy', it's not a 'crook vs cop', it's 'cop vs someone-they-killed-whoopsie'. It's obvious why the cops would lie in such a circumstance, but why the wife of the non-perp?

I find it interesting, too, that a captain level LEO from that county wouldn't know if his men carry cameras. Or should. Or have to. "gee, i dunno!". Wow, sort of brainless about your policy, there, captain.

Not that any camera will have survived by now. Notice, too, that GBI is taking the officers' story as definitive and is not considering the wife's.

a reply to: Bedlam

I never once believed the account as told by the officers. This new information doesn't solidify anything it's merely another version and only video could help show which is closer to the truth. But law enforcement knows how much weight their version of events carry though so they will always claim they gave repeated orders that were ignored, creating a scenario where they had no choice but to shoot. To me the more likely scenario is they were spooked and shot at sudden movement, possibly even shouting something as they shot rather than before.

They will likely chalk this up to a tragic accident where I would declare it incompetence. And we all know the only people who generally have consequences for incompetence are civilians. The offending officer will be back on the streets within a month or two.