cp702

I recently was talking with a friend about fastest ways to get arrested if pulled over for drunk driving. This might be up there (the list also includes things like asking to call a friend to recite the alphabet backwards, or offering the cop a beer)

Police tend to use special retention holsters, for exactly that reason. You'd probably also notice them trying to get your gun, and be able to react. That said, you should never rely on a retention holster to save your life.

That's not necessarily what exigent circumstances is. This certainly could fall within them. NB, you are not a lawyer. Neither am I. Neither of us is particularly qualified to determine what is and is not constitutional. There's not much point in continuing to talk about this. The police would search your house whether or not you gave consent, and you'd have no chance in hell of successfully objecting; maybe illegal, maybe not, but neither of us can provide great insight.

I'm replying to scales, not you. And the explosion in Texas was not planned; that's for sure.

Well, since everything in Boston was the same two people...

Bad things happen every day in the *world*. This is just getting more press coverage.

No, all it means is that explosions and shootings get high ratings for news agencies. There was a single criminal incident this week. Everything you heard was from the one incident. It included the Boston Marathon bombing, the murder of an MIT Police officer, a massive shootout in Watertown, MA, and a manhunt in Watertown, MA. The only other thing that happened was a fertilizer factory explosion. That was not a criminal incident; it was what happens when a fertilizer plant catches fire (fertilizer being highly, highly explosive).

1) The text "Article the sixth" occurs nowhere in the Bill of Rights. It's broken into amendments, not articles. 2) The Sixth Amendment has nothing to do with searches. It covers right to an attorney. You're thinking of the Fourth Amendment. EDIT: 1) and 2) should be replaced with "cp702 needs to learn to do research in unusual places." 3) and 4) still apply. That said, literally no one refers to the Bill of Rights with those numbers. Article the first from your source was never ratified, and is not part of the United States Constitution. Article the second was ratified - in 1992, as the 27th Amendment. It is never considered part of the bill of rights. The way everyone would always refer to what you're thinking of, and the way it is officially referred to in all courts, is as the Fourth Amendment. 3) The Fourth Amendment has various legal exceptions. One exception precisely covers this case. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Bill of Rights works - the rights listed have various exceptions. For example, despite the First Amendment, libel is still illegal, commercial speech can be regulated, and it is illegal to incite people to riot. Despite the Fourth Amendment, cops can perform searches if needed to prevent imminent threats to safety (so a cop can pat you down on reasonable suspicion). One such exception says that, if the time to get a warrant presents a danger to the public, a search can be made to protect public safety. This is well-established law. An armed and dangerous suspect on the loose is an imminent threat to public safety, so the police may enter without warrant. 4) The way the Fourth Amendment is generally enforced is by excluding illegally gathered evidence from court (and also excluding any evidence that would not have been gathered were it not for the illegal evidence). Even if the police *did* violate the Fourth Amendment, it would really only come into play if charges were filed based on evidence they get from the violation. The police have the charges and evidence they need already; they weren't searching for evidence here.

OK, I will.

1) No, it falls into the exigent circumstance exception. That means it isn't illegal. 2) They don't exactly need you to open the door. They're more than capable of opening your door themselves.

I can't watch the video at the moment, but did they call for backup? Because I've heard that the NYPD can get a whole lot of backup to an officer in a matter of seconds, often.

False. The Fourth Amendment has several exceptions, including consent, plain view, exigent circumstances, border searches, vehicle searches, and searches incident to arrest. Consent, plain view, and exigent circumstances all CAN apply to houses (border searches, not so much, for obvious reasons), and exigent circumstances applies in this case (an at-loose armed and dangerous suspect is an exigent circumstance).

Good.

MODERATOR NOTICE For everyone's reference: The title of this thread used to be "MIT Police Officer Shot" before it was renamed.

And a donation page for the officer's family: http://web.mit.edu/tencate/www/

Are you talking about someone doing short bursts on the siren? If so: I know some people figured out how to mod their horns to do that.

Not that I'm aware. That's the right question, though - it's not that he's certainly not a killer because he wasn't convicted, it's that we don't know for sure if he is a killer or not (and so shouldn't necessarily be describing him as a killer). He may well be a killer. Whether or not he killed someone, the felony murder rule would almost certainly mean he could be convicted of first degree murder (the other part of the difference - you can be convicted of first degree murder in the US without actually killing someone, just by committing some felony during the course of which someone dies; in that case, I wouldn't call you a "killer", even if you are a convicted murderer). EDIT: There is now a site to remember the officer who was killed: http://seancolliermemories.tumblr.com/

If those were all different cars, it was probably around the size of the Vice President's motorcade, or maybe a bit larger or smaller. Motorcades are multiple cars across, so while they're shorter, they have more units than you'd guess. They also have motorcycles, which are very compressed. I know for a fact they weren't chasing bin Laden; if they were, the cars would more likely say "Raccoon City Police".

Note the "unarmed, nondangerous" bits. These guys seem to be neither. Sam: You become a killer the moment you kill someone. There is no such thing as "innocent until proven guilty"; the phrase is "*presumed* innocent until proven guilty". There is a key distinction: whether or not you committed a crime is a fact about the world, and a court's ruling can't change that.

Yeah, I think there's just about no way he gets taken into custody alive.

That's probably a good idea.

The entire city of Boston is apparently on lockdown. Holy shit, I was supposed to be flying into Cambridge today.

Holy jesus fuck.

Hey, Universe? See Boston over them? Cut them a fucking break.