>The incident started when an Aurora police officer attempted to lead Seacat into an office at a Walmart, where he was suspected of shoplifting. But Seacat ran to a Lexus in the parking lot, jumped in and fled.
So they caused $670,000 of damage to protect Walmart from shoplifting. Not great ROI for the community.
All of that is beside the point, anyway. The point is that the government should be paying for that house.
Caused 670,000 to uphold the law and prevent us from inching that much closer to anarchy. That's the invisible benefit to most. Soon as criminals can figure out the law enforcement's cost-benefit ratio, they will start exploiting it, and there's too many examples of this to count.
I'm sure the homeowner who had their entire house destroyed to catch a petty thief appreciated the police's efforts to save him from anarchy...by essentially being anarchists themselves.
Even if you follow this logic and believe it to be true, the police decided that putting an innocent homeowner out of a house and over half a million bucks, plus the cost of all the officers spectating, and the cost of rolling out a tank, was worth it to recover a few dollars of lost income for Walmart.
You don’t see any possible middle ground between “let criminals run rampant” and “LARP your favorite action movie”? No room to, say, wait the guy out or talk him down before you systematically destroy someone’s house? Even though not immediately resorting to military-levels of violence works better and cheaper in most other countries?
A gang of guys with weapons and a tank destroyed the home of a family who did nothing wrong, offering no compensation or apology afterward. And the shoplifter is the bad guy who society needs to be protected from?
If "upholding the law" means we create yet another innocent victim who is actually worse off than any of the previous victims, what's the point? If the government is that unaccountable, isn't that essentially anarchy? They're only getting away with it because you can't win a fight with them, right?
As soon as the suspect fled, it became a case of resisting arrest and disobeying a police officer and probably several other charges (home invasion too?).
Arguably the police officer did his job, perhaps even bending over backward to protect the suspect's rights. Though, a more traditional "alright, buddy, put your hands up, you're under arrest!" at gunpoint might have forestalled the ensuing situation.
Absolutely agree that the homeowner should get some kind of redress for what was done to his home.
Don't get me wrong, but this kind of point is something I've only ever seen on the internet, and typically from an American point of view. It makes the cops look like infallible overlords or, dare I say it, tyrants, and the criminal as someone completely undeserving of any understanding, benefit of the doubt, or compassion.
> resisting arrest and disobeying a police officer
Mercy me, how dare he. He definitely deserves the electric chair for that.
> probably several other charges (home invasion too?).
After being identified as a criminal because of the original shoplifting attempt, it's now okay to concoct a laundry list of potential new crimes just to make sure the cops can really throw the book at this degenerate. They're now entirely justified in ramming a military tank through a house while a hundred other cops watch the show.
I presume that an officer doing their job would have been able to let the shoplifter run off and, because they'd identified him and the stolen car, they could issue a warrant and pick him up later.
> I presume that an officer doing their job would have been able to let the shoplifter run off and, because they'd identified him and the stolen car, they could issue a warrant and pick him up later.
Let him run off? That's not really how policing works, at least not in the U.S. The police see someone commit a crime, they're obligated to pursue him, unless ordered to stand down or they're forced to triage because another's life is in danger etc.
It seems to me that there's one wrongdoer here and that's the shoplifter/home invader/gunman. That said, yeah, perhaps they shouldn't have called SWAT but on the other hand, according to the article they tried to negotiate for 5 hours, then he fired shots. Not sure what else they could do but fire back.
I don't know why everyone is eliding the gunfire here, to me that's the most important aspect of the story. If he was merely a shoplifter, there would be little harm in just issuing a warrant and looking for him later. But once he started shooting, preservation of property became a secondary concern.
It's still incredibly hard to justify the use of a tank (and a hundred cops) against a single shooter, demolishing a house to reach him. This is the same country that wishes away the many mass shootings every year with thoughts and prayers.
The entire saga screams incompetence and "he had a gun" is a terrible excuse. The whole point is to de-escalate, not one-up them.
The police in the US have a deep, institutional problem with how they serve their communities, and it infests (if indeed it isn't fed by) many aspects of the wider country's culture. It's both sad and infuriating to read about when you see that we don't have any of these issues in other western countries.
He shot at the police. They discovered narcotics needles in the house. This guy was likely on drugs, definitely armed and dangerous. How exactly were they supposed to de-escalate? If they backed off, he could have maybe slipped out the back door, stolen the Lechs' car, maybe went into a neighboring house and held someone hostage or shot them. He was at that point a public menace. Also he had multiple past felonies or felony charges (I don't remember which).
But we're kind of off the main topic which is Google tracking and geo-fencing :)
So if a shooter sets up in a sufficiently expensive property, the police have to sit there passively and risk being shot because they don't have the money to pay for the damage caused by going in? That makes no sense.
I'm generally of the opinion that police are too heavy-handed in the US, but in this particular case I don't think there was any other reasonable option. Moreover the ancestor post referring to the suspect as simply a "shoplifter" was inaccurate.
You wait it out and de-escalate. The heavy handed response is dangerous for all parties.
When I was growing up, the Sheriff initiated a big chase and SWAT response for some dumbass kid who rode an ATV on the road. The end result was an accident that killed the kid and severely injured a deputy (who IIRC wasn’t even involved in the incident response), who was unable to work again.
I don't think the two situations are comparable at all. In the ATV case, it was the police who escalated, inappropriately, in pursuit of someone who was mainly a danger to himself. In the destroyed home case, it was the suspect who escalated (repeatedly), from shoplifting to entering a home to shooting at people.
I don’t think you can argue that the police response with armoured cars, explosive charges and house demolition was ‘proportionate’. This sort of policing isn’t routine in most places.
The police shouldn’t have any obligation to arrest a perp on the perp’s schedule. They have to be able to go in and attack him if need be. The shoplifter could have de-escalated.
Saying that police should consider and bear some responsibility for the consequences of a fast and aggressive response and accordingly sometimes avoid it is very different from police "having an obligation to arrest a perp on the perp's schedule".
If it’s totally gross and nonsensical, like blowing up a house to catch a guy armed with a bullwhip, sure. But somebody firing his gun at people after getting chased for shoplifting? That’s a cold-blooded killer with bad aim. You don’t just sit around and hope he listens to the voice of reason. Or maybe you do. We’ve got lots of Monday morning quarterbacks here.
> So if a shooter sets up in a sufficiently expensive property, the police have to sit there passively and risk being shot because they don't have the money to pay for the damage caused by going in? That makes no sense.
No, you let the police do what they need to do AND you have them pay the homeowner for damages. The government should have some sort of insurance for this.
Yup, we (the people) will pay to repair/replace all the police equipment damaged in the act of protecting citizens. We should also pay for all damage caused to the property of private citizen's during that same act. It seems insane to pay for half of the damage and not the other.
I think people are just as mortified over the 1985 case where Philadelphia police firebombed a drug den and burnt down an entire block of lower-income housing. The police should pay for collateral damage, because it forces the public to reevaluate what kind of police action is worth the trouble of violence and destruction (versus earlier social interventions).
Likewise, if you find it offensive that police would be more careful with a wealthy property owner's possessions than with others, maybe that should prompt a reevalution of what kinds of wealth disparities are acceptable.
In general, there is probably no private property that the state cannot destroy and then replace with no problem. Money really is no problem at all here.
Also, yeah, being proportional in your response (and that includes putting property damage into your calculation about what’s proportional) is always useful.
Literally this. It isn’t even a question if the home is “sufficiently expensive” - if a criminal is holed up somewhere where no one else is, try to negotiate their surrender. It’s likely that it will end in better outcomes for the criminal, police, and the homeowner.
The same logic applies with high speed pursuits. You’ve likely got a helicopter in the air following them - back off a bit until things cool down.
But the role of the police isn’t to deescalate and once you acknowledge that, these decisions make more sense.
”Desperate and potentially dangerous people in Europe are, therefore, more likely than their American counterparts to encounter well-educated and restrained police officers.
However, explanations of elevated police lethality in the US should focus on more than police policy and behavior. The charged encounters that give rise to American deadly force also result from weak gun controls, social and economic deprivation and injustice, inadequate mental health care and an intense desire to avoid harsh imprisonment.
Future research should examine not only whether American police behave differently but also whether more generous, supportive and therapeutic policies in Europe ensure that fewer people become desperate enough to summon, provoke or resist their less dangerous police.”
Other countries don’t have such a militarized police force. I mean that both in terms of the arms and equipment they use and the attitude they have toward suspects (treating them as “the enemy”).
The flip side of this ad absurdist argument is that if a suspect holed up in MoMA, it’s okay to burn it down because he shot three of the maybe fifteen bullets he has in his possession? No, no it is not.
Waiting out a suspect who has already shot at the police is dangerous. Any mistake that left a person exposed to be shot at could be fatal. Protecting life is a higher priority than protecting property.
Ok but even if you agree that the police did what they had to do in order to apprehend a suspect, shouldn't the department or local government be repairing damage they did to someone's house?
That really leaves the random victim out to dry. You cant get that kind of money out of most shoplifters no matter how hard you sue them. Would you hold this same position if it was your house the police bombed?
This is an ironic response to a situation which is literally about bringing justice.
If that’s your point of view, why pursue the shoplifter in the first place? Could’ve just used that line against Walmart and saved everyone a lot of hassle.
What a heartless outlook. It's one thing for something bad to happen, it's another for the government to randomly blow up your house and peace out. I honestly have a very hard time believing you would have this attitude about your own things if you ever get thrown under a bus.
Yes, I have home owners insurance to cover this. The reason the homeowners brought a lawsuit is so insurance can recoup their money. The insurance co cannot sue as themselves, they must subrogate the homeowner and the only way to do that is by
waiting for a civil suit (and the ins co fulfilling their duty to indemnify)
I’m shocked at the number of people talking authoritatively about this case and yet forget the basics of home ownership..
Did you read the article? The insurance only paid half of the damage. And the neighbors house was also heavily damaged and their insurance didnt pay anything.
Then boohoo to that guy he went cheap on his insurance. My policy says no such thing. It’s all about the text in your policy, you have 30 days to dispute policy verbiage when you sign up. You should really take advantage of that!
>The incident started when an Aurora police officer attempted to lead Seacat into an office at a Walmart, where he was suspected of shoplifting. But Seacat ran to a Lexus in the parking lot, jumped in and fled.
So they caused $670,000 of damage to protect Walmart from shoplifting. Not great ROI for the community.
All of that is beside the point, anyway. The point is that the government should be paying for that house.