The police can blow up your house and owe you nothing

[MillCreek]

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774788611/police-owe-nothing-to-man-whose-home-they-blew-up-appeals-court-says?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news

If you are an innocent bystander and having your house blown up occurs in the course of police business.

[Regolith]

This sort of thing is why killdozers get built...

[HeroHog]

So, blowing up the judge's house would be fine to protect the public from him, no?

[cordex]

In other jurisdictions that scenario has also resulted in police agencies buying properties they have destroyed.

[MillCreek]

And the guy's homeowners' insurance would not have paid for the rebuild of the house either, since police destroying your home is not a covered loss.

[WLJ]

That could be a whole lot of houses if "We're coming for your AR-15s" Beto has his way.

[TechMan]

I am 100% in agreement that the police shouldn't be able to do this and the .gov shouldn't be able to walk away from the damage that their agents cause.  I believe this guy didn't help his cause by building a bigger/better house, including re-pouring the foundations for a totally different house.

[fifth_column]

To think all of this started over the shoplifting of two belts and a shirt. 

The suspect in the case, who was wanted in connection with shoplifting, was taken into custody after a 19-hour standoff. More than 100 officers from agencies around the Denver area responded to the incident.

[brimic]

The future is now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I24K8BfV840

[MechAg94]

So the incentive is for police to use excessive force since they don't have to pay for damages as long as they have a valid warrant. 

[Fly320s]

I don't have a problem with the idea of the police being exempt from paying for damages directly related to their duties, BUT, there has to be a limit.  Destroying a house to catch a shoplifter anyone?  That is way beyond reasonable.  Yes, he was armed, but he was also contained and not a direct threat to anyone.  I thought the modern solution to a barricaded suspect was to wait him out.  Cut the power and wait.  Or, worst case scenario, a single well-placed shot to the head.

My guess is that this homeowner didn't get his money's worth from the lawyer he hired.  I find it hard to believe that the local PD didn't have SOPs in place to deal with barricaded suspects.  And if the PD didn't, then that is also a liability.

edited, because it was way more than just shoplifting.

[cordex]

Destroying a house to catch a shoplifter?  That is way beyond reasonable.

I'm not defending the tactics used to flush the guy out or how the administrators handled the situation after the fact, but this kind of sentiment ignores the facts of the case.

The "shoplifter" was spotted in the store stealing stuff and when approached by a police officer attempted to run the cop over with a Lexus.  While the cop was looking for the guy, a witness who saw him notified police that he was armed.  He then committed a home invasion on a residence occupied only by a minor.  At one point he attempted to escape through the garage and fired on a police officer getting out of his vehicle, striking the SUV and narrowly missing the cop.  They also became aware during the situation that he was wanted on multiple warrants.  When the first SWAT team went in they were fired upon and backed out because of this.  He was sentenced to 100 years in 2018.

This may have started out as a shoplifting call, but to characterize this as "destroying the house to catch a shoplifter" is dishonest.

https://web.archive.org/web/20191030160051/https://www.greenwoodvillage.com/DocumentCenter/View/13916/Affidavit-Seacat?bidId=

[Jamisjockey]

To think all of this started over the shoplifting of two belts and a shirt. 

Eric Garner was choked to death for selling loose cigarettes...so yeah.

[Fly320s]

I'm not defending the tactics used to flush the guy out or how the administrators handled the situation after the fact, but this kind of sentiment ignores the facts of the case.

The "shoplifter" was spotted in the store stealing stuff and when approached by a police officer attempted to run the cop over with a Lexus.  While the cop was looking for the guy, a witness who saw him notified police that he was armed.  He then committed a home invasion on a residence occupied only by a minor.  At one point he attempted to escape through the garage and fired on a police officer getting out of his vehicle, striking the SUV and narrowly missing the cop.  They also became aware during the situation that he was wanted on multiple warrants.  When the first SWAT team went in they were fired upon and backed out because of this.  He was sentenced to 100 years in 2018.

This may have started out as a shoplifting call, but to characterize this as "destroying the house to catch a shoplifter" is dishonest.

https://web.archive.org/web/20191030160051/https://www.greenwoodvillage.com/DocumentCenter/View/13916/Affidavit-Seacat?bidId=

You are correct and I edited my post.  I stand by my assessment that since the guy was contained in the house, then there was no need to destroy the house to get to him.  Wait him out.  Send in a robot with gas, maybe.  But that is all.

[cordex]

You are correct and I edited my post.  I stand by my assessment that since the guy was contained in the house, then there was no need to destroy the house to get to him.  Wait him out.  Send in a robot with gas, maybe.  But that is all.

A lot of departments are moving toward the "wait them out" strategy, and it is easy to see why from a liability standpoint.

Again, I'm not trying to defend their tactics and if they felt those actions were necessary, then the departments involved should at least be on the hook for the damage.  That said, they did wait.  A pretty long time.  Is there ever such a thing as too long in your opinion?  If you were kicked out of your home because of an armed, barricaded suspect next door, how many days or weeks would you want the cops to wait before they went in?  If you were a business owner, how long would you be okay with your business being closed down because a barricaded suspect thought he could hold out in a grocery store for a good while?

For that matter, if you think buying a severely damaged house is expensive for the taxpayer, what about the nonstop overtime required to wait someone out indefinitely?

[MechAg94]

A lot of departments are moving toward the "wait them out" strategy, and it is easy to see why from a liability standpoint.

Again, I'm not trying to defend their tactics and if they felt those actions were necessary, then the departments involved should at least be on the hook for the damage.  That said, they did wait.  A pretty long time.  Is there ever such a thing as too long in your opinion?  If you were kicked out of your home because of an armed, barricaded suspect next door, how many days or weeks would you want the cops to wait before they went in?  If you were a business owner, how long would you be okay with your business being closed down because a barricaded suspect thought he could hold out in a grocery store for a good while?

For that matter, if you think buying a severely damaged house is expensive for the taxpayer, what about the nonstop overtime required to wait someone out indefinitely?

Which is more expensive?  Overtime or replacing a house.  Why don't they just set fire to the house and pay the damages later? 

Regardless, I don't think they should be able to walk away and leave the homeowner on the hook for what they did. 

[brimic]

Which is more expensive?  Overtime or replacing a house.  Why don't they just set fire to the house and pay the damages later? 

Regardless, I don't think they should be able to walk away and leave the homeowner on the hook for what they did. 

Overtime- because they don't have to pay for damages to the house.

[Hawkmoon]

Which is more expensive?  Overtime or replacing a house.  Why don't they just set fire to the house and pay the damages later? 
 

Don't give them any more ideas.

[cordex]

Which is more expensive?  Overtime or replacing a house.   

I don't know.

They would usually have patrol on perimeter, plus SWAT, plus command, plus medics.  For a short-term event you can take some guys from patrol and nearby departments, but if something is going to take days or weeks then other departments are going to pull their officers and you will need to get guys back on the road because presumably other crime doesn't stop all of a sudden just because you've got an emergency.

A serious SWAT callout with shots fired like this one could easily pull fifty or a hundred cops into an area.  If you kept that kind of presence going for any length of time I'm guessing it could cost $50k or more per day on salary.  That buys you a house pretty quickly in some places, and in others it would take a few days.

Of course once the bad guy is settled in and reasonably quiet you could trim manpower way, way back and leave maybe a dozen cops to watch the house and handle traffic.  You'd probably have to.  Of course, then those cops are going to have to spend as much time managing property owners trying to come in as they do keeping an eye on the guy in the house.

On a per-event basis it's probably going to usually be cheaper to wait a few days or couple of weeks for the food and water to run out and get the guy to come out.  That said, if the criminals know that cops are just going to wait them out you'll probably see this kind of thing happening over and over again.  If the criminal happens to have the luck to get barricaded in a Mormon's house then you'd better hope they don't like napping on couches and eating out of the pantry because they will be there a while.

Why don't they just set fire to the house and pay the damages later?

Because fire kills indiscriminately and can spread.

Regardless, I don't think they should be able to walk away and leave the homeowner on the hook for what they did. 

Agreed.

[TechMan]

I don't know.

They would usually have patrol on perimeter, plus SWAT, plus command, plus medics.  For a short-term event you can take some guys from patrol and nearby departments, but if something is going to take days or weeks then other departments are going to pull their officers and you will need to get guys back on the road because presumably other crime doesn't stop all of a sudden just because you've got an emergency.

A serious SWAT callout with shots fired like this one could easily pull fifty or a hundred cops into an area.  If you kept that kind of presence going for any length of time I'm guessing it could cost $50k or more per day on salary.  That buys you a house pretty quickly in some places, and in others it would take a few days.

Of course once the bad guy is settled in and reasonably quiet you could trim manpower way, way back and leave maybe a dozen cops to watch the house and handle traffic.  You'd probably have to.  Of course, then those cops are going to have to spend as much time managing property owners trying to come in as they do keeping an eye on the guy in the house.

On a per-event basis it's probably going to usually be cheaper to wait a few days or couple of weeks for the food and water to run out and get the guy to come out.  That said, if the criminals know that cops are just going to wait them out you'll probably see this kind of thing happening over and over again.  If the criminal happens to have the luck to get barricaded in a Mormon's house then you'd better hope they don't like napping on couches and eating out of the pantry because they will be there a while.
Because fire kills indiscriminately and can spread.
Agreed.

The OP article stated that more than 100 officers responded to this incident.

[zxcvbob]

Which is more expensive?  Overtime or replacing a house.  Why don't they just set fire to the house and pay the damages later? 

Regardless, I don't think they should be able to walk away and leave the homeowner on the hook for what they did. 

That's been done before, in Philadelphia, I think.  Not sure whether or not they paid for the damage.

[Angel Eyes]

That's been done before, in Philadelphia, I think.  Not sure whether or not they paid for the damage.

$1.5 million for burning 65 houses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing