Radley Balko declares emphatically that “your right to home defense is dead.” I couldn’t agree more. He cites this instance from Stockbridge, GA:

STOCKBRIDGE, Ga. Henry County police are investigating a home invasion in Stockbridge that involved two men posing as SWAT team officers.
Police say the men entered the home about 1 a-m yesterday pointing handguns and wearing shirts that read “S-W-A-T.”

Police spokesman Lieutenant Jason Bolton says a man and woman in the home heard the voices of the men. He says the suspects claimed to be members of the Henry County Police SWAT team.

I think Balko has previously alluded to this possibility – and late last year, I suggested that this sort of thing would most certainly occur.

“How long do you think it will take before actual, dangerous criminals decide to emulate this behavior? It won’t take much … [T]he results will be disastrous: citizens afraid to defend their own homes against what they believe to be a clear and present danger, because someone is claiming to be the police.”

Allowing actual law enforcement officers to behave in such a manner only provides an incentive for criminals to do the same. If it were a matter of policy that police officers did not break down doors in the middle of the night, citizens could be assured that only criminals would behave in such a way. The current practice though, of police behaving in manners which are patently criminal, and criminals “emulating” this behavior, is bad news for cops, and bad news for law-abiding citizens.

We know that some police officers are being shot at, who otherwise wouldn’t be, and we know that some law-abiding citizens are losing their lives or their freedom for shooting at officers they believed to be criminals. And we know that some criminals are no longer being shot at, because citizens fear they might be firing at police. Police are always operating under the assumption that they are doing the right thing. It follows then, that when fired upon, they believe they are being fired upon by the law-breakers they are trying to apprehend. When this is not the case, they are typically absolved of all wrongdoing, on the assumption that they were acting in good-faith. The police will always be justified in returning fire. Law-abiding citizens will rarely be exonerated for engaging police officers, even unknowingly, in a firefight.

The only group that definitely benefits from this arrangement are the criminals, who now stand a smaller chance of being shot at, if they merely take the precautions of purchasone SWAT t-shirts for less than $10.

“[J]ust because someone claims to be a police officer on official business should not, and rationally cannot be considered evidence to that effect.”

The citizens are essentially being told that your right to self defense ends with the uncertainty occasioned by someone (who might be a police officer) breaking down his door (maybe on accident) in the middle of the night, with no warning. If only we could hold law enforcement officers accountable to the same standards.

Criminals don’t give warnings.