I’ve had this happen too; forget to lock the door, and being awakened by cops tramping up the stairs and terrifying my pregnant girlfriend. They were meant to be raiding the house downstairs for dealing, but had the wrong number on the warrant. Good job I hadn’t locked the door, or they’d have bust it down. Fortunately, our police don’t carry guns as a rule.
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Those bloody cats again…
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Police without firearms? Where is this - Britain, perhaps?
It’s rather sad that I instantly default to thinking police officers are armed and dangerous.
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Even here in Blightey plenty of our police officers have guns. It has become worryingly commonplace.
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I think the important lesson here is get central air.
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Huh. According to wikipedia, “In Northern Ireland, all police officers carry firearms. In the rest of the United Kingdom, police officers do not carry firearms, except in special circumstances.”
Must be an awful lot of “special circumstances” going on. That or maybe wikipedia is just behind the times?
Le sigh. Discussing the police is so depressing any more.
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Na that sounds about right. As you guessed, there are plenty of ‘special circumstances’ 
Kind of like how stop-and-search laws are for special circumstances… you know, like checking people getting off public transport for illegal… anything.
You won’t see your average bobby with a gun, but then it’s rare to see your average bobby anyway. I’ve seen enough police officers with guns to not be surprised when I see one. Maybe I just watch too much late night TV (we have our own incarnation of COPS type programs).
Edit: For clarity I think they only tend to have guns if they think they might face someone that’s armed (I’m not sure if it’s important what they’re armed with), and at airports, ports etc. I know someone that was pulled over and held at gunpoint by police in the UK - granted they did think he was trafficking arms (he wasn’t), but still, it happens.
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Those are often just as noisy.
The real lesson is be white and don’t own a dog. Unless you’re cool with watching the police summarily execute it while they boot-press you into the floor and handcuff you.
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That is funny, in retrospect. When I was awakened by police at 4AM pounding on the door - also naked - I was fortunate that the person I was sleeping with was (a) the homeowner and (b) knew where her clothes were as I was neither.
Turns out that when a contractor does a crappy job of sealing the underground phone junction box and there’s a week of heavy rains water can get into the power and short things out. Turns out a shorted line reads as “open call to 911” with no human responding, which tends to lead to cops being dispatched post-haste. Convincing them there was no emergency and would they please stop banging and shouting so we could get the 6-year-old back to sleep was a little tough. Being white no doubt helped, though we didn’t think of it that way at the time.
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The only reason I worry about an erroneous midnight raid on my property is that my dog would react quite unfavourably to it (he doesn’t like confrontation and makes a bit of a scene). The first thing I’d do if I heard someone breach the door would be to shout ‘The dog is friendly!’.
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“special circumstances,” brings to mind Westerfeld’s book “Specials.”
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There was a news story from Colorado on this subject a couple months ago:
“To access the sliding glass door that was left open, the officer who entered her home had to open a latching gate, go upstairs, and access the elevated deck where her door is located.”
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A quick note on probable cause: it’s defined as the set of fact, circumstances, and reliable information that would leade a reasonable, prudent, and cautious officer to believe that a crime has been committed and a specific person committed the crime.
While the totality of the circumstances may have provided reasonable suspicion that criminal activity might be afoot, I don’t believe it’s possible to have achieved probable cause, which is the same standard required to make an arrest.
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I’m certain they could twist it to suit their agenda.
“Of course I believed a specific person committed the crime! I just didn’t know which specific person! Which is why I had to enter the house to find out!”
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[quote=“Glitch, post:11, topic:8542”]…
although I would be confused and perhaps startled on being woken, I most certainly would not respond violently or abruptly.[/quote]
Of course, you have the benefit of extreme armchair (workchair?) quarterbacking. And not everyone responds the same to being woken (sleeping and waking are different for everyone). Also, would you feel differently if you had kids or a pregnant spouse in the house?
You’d be wrong-on on that count. The LAST thing police want to do is sneak up on someone in their home. The first priority is to safety–not to skulk around like SEAL Team members.
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they did announce themselves. the author said they couldn’t be heard over the fan.
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Without the benefit of further details, I’m guessing this is something like how it happened:
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“we benefit from the sort of class and race biases that prevent a man from being shot or tased when he runs screaming, naked, at a cop in the dark at 4:00 in the morning.”
Ferb, I know what we’re gonna do today…
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Same here. We have some clever cats. One can open any door that has a handle he can get a grip on, and another who sometimes yowls in an eerily human manner. I probably would have done as I always do, yelling out, “I hear you, (insert name of cat), you can go to sleep now!” Then I would have rolled over to go back to sleep.
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Which is precisely why I am suggesting that, instead of waking the person from six feet away with the sound of your movements and the glare of your flashlight, you go out of your way to awaken them from a much greater distance, ideally out of direct line of sight, and you constantly say “Hello? Is anyone home? This is the police, I’m Officer So-And-So”, over and over and over to help them gain a proper handle on the nature of the situation while they wake up.
I mean, you pretty much have to wake the residents if they’re home. So you’re going to want to do so from as great a distance as reasonably possible, and in such a way as to provide them with immediate clarity of context and a reassurance of your non-threatening intent, right? Surely it’s needlessly dangerous to just start searching the home silently, without calling, right?
Then how did they manage to get within six feet of a sleeping couple without waking them? And why is it I can rapidly find dozens of news stories about startled homeowners being rudely awakened by police who failed to announce themselves adequately, but I’m drawing a great big blank on stories of police taking every possible precaution and safety in repeatedly, constantly announcing their presence, identity, and intent?
If you have some sort of information or evidence to the contrary of my perceptions, please share it. But if all you have is an unsupported assertion that my perceptions are wrong, without any substantial citations showing otherwise, I can’t put any weight or value to your words whatsoever.
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