Ways to deal with cops

[dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)]

Way to go!

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>From: zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
>Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.guns,ca.politics,la.news,misc.legal
>Subject: Man Facing Death Sentence For Killing Trespassing Cop
>Date: 20 Sep 1996 17:46:21 GMT
>Organization: ptyx
>Lines: 62
>Message-ID: <51ul9d$21e4@uni.library.ucla.edu>
>NNTP-Posting-Host: oak.math.ucla.edu
>
>Do you wonder what happens to civilians unwilling to lie down for
>police abuse of power?  Daniel Allan Tuffree, 49, a former high school
>teacher, the testimony in whose trial ended yesterday, has been charged
>with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Officer Michael Clark
>13 months ago, after three warrantless police officers traipsed on his
>front lawn with their guns drawn -- to check on his welfare.  The case,
>which is presided over by the notoriously prosecution-friendly Judge
>Allan L. Steele in the Simi Valley courthouse that hosted the acquittal
>of Rodney King's uniformed assailants in their first trial, will go to
>the jury in early October after jury instructions are drawn and lawyers
>make their closing arguments.  Tuffree faces a possible death sentence.
>
>Clark was one of three police officers sent to Tuffree's home on
>August 4, 1995, after reports that the former Chatsworth High School
>teacher had been drinking alcohol, taking Valium and was possibly
>suicidal.  A gunfight began shortly after police walked into Tuffree's
>backyard and started asking him questions, refusing his order to leave
>his property.  Defense attorneys have argued that Clark fired on
>Tuffree first and that police acted improperly. They called expert
>witnesses who testified that police should have walked away once they
>realized that Tuffree was not hurt or suicidal.
>
>Lou Reiter, a retired Los Angeles Police Department commander,
>testified that Simi Valley police officers made one mistake after
>another when they came to Tuffree's home.  According to Reiter's
>testimony, the three police officers were working with third-hand
>information when they arrived at the scene.  Before taking action,
>they did not devise a plan in case a confrontation occurred with
>Tuffree, who was a known gun owner.  And they did not announce
>themselves before walking into Tuffree's backyard with their guns
>drawn, all actions that could have aggravated a distraught man who
>reportedly had been drinking alcohol, taking Valium and who had
>stopped answering his phone.  "No one had anticipated or made an
>evaluation of what would happen if things didn't go right," said
>Reiter, a private consultant on police procedure who was an LAPD
>officer for 20 years.  He also told the jury that he believed Simi
>Valley Police Sergeant Anthony Anzilotti to have been negligible in
>his role as the supervising officer on scene that day, testifying that
>"in [his] opinion [Anzilotti] didn't supervise at all."  And he said
>Clark erred by not walking away from Tuffree's kitchen window once he
>realized the former schoolteacher was conscious and not injured: "The
>emergency is over; therefore, the right to be in his backyard is
>over."
>
>Reiter denied the claims of two other police experts called by the
>prosecution, both of whom testified that Simi Valley police officers
>sent to Tuffree's house last summer had a "moral, ethical, and legal"
>obligation to follow through with the request to check on Tuffree's
>welfare, having no choice but to get close enough to make direct
>contact with Tuffree in order to ensure that he was safe.  But Reiter,
>who retired from the LAPD in 1981, said that "officers always have a
>choice," explaining that there are situations in which police can walk
>away once they have determined that a person is safe.  "There are a
>lot of people in their homes that are not confronting a medical
>emergency who just want to be left alone," he said.
>
>See http://www.latimes.com/HOME/COMMUN/NEWS/ZONE26B for more information.
>
>Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
>Zeleny@math.ucla.edu | Popeye:   "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
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