The things some people do
Feb. 21st, 2007 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumImagine this.
Someone busts into your house and threatens you with a deadly weapon.
I know what I'd do, and the least of it is going to lead to an arrest.
So, this guy in Wisconsin hears, what he thinks is, a woman sceaming for help from his upstairs neighbor's place.
He grabs a sword, runs up the stairs, kicks in the door, and finds his neighbor watching some porn.
Attempted rescue
On the one level this is commendable, because, so he says, he didn't have a phone. Exigent circumstances allow cops to go busting in, why not John Q. Public?
On another level, it's daft.
I used to be a security guard. To get a license I had to take a test of 25 questions, and miss nary a one (this didn't mean much, it was open book, there was no fee, and one could take it as often as needed... it was scary watching the people taking it, the number who needed to take it 3, 4 a dozen times to pass).
Most of what the test was about was the limits of being a citizen. In Calif. anyone can make an arrest. The requirements are straightforward; a misdemeanor has to be committed in one's presence, a felony requires, "good reason to believe," the person was the perpetrator. Oddly enough these are the requirements (roughly) for cops. They are allowed to make an arrest on a criminal complaint for a misdemeanor, but in that case the person swearing out the complaint is attesting they saw the misdemeanor.
The difference is that cops have some protections if they screw up, John Q. Public doesn't.
The guy says, he froze. He meant to hide the sword (what?) but he froze.
"Van Iveren said Tuesday that he heard a woman "screaming for help," grabbed the sword, bounded up the stairs, kicked in the apartment door and confronted the man who lived there.
"I intended to hold it behind my back and knock. But I froze and instead, what happened happened," he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Contesting his neighbor's account, Van Iveren said he didn't look anywhere in the apartment except the front room, and that he never threatened the neighbor with the sword.
"I had the sword extended. But that was all," he said."
When did he freeze? Before, or after he kicked in the door. He "only extended," the sword. Good. After all, it isn't as if pointing a sword at somone is "doing" anything." We'll just forget that when fencing someone who has, "merely," extended weapon requires that the offending weapon be dealt with... why? Because if you don't deal with it, the person holding it will teach you what it feels like to be a shish-kebab.
There are those who see this as blown all out of proportion, who say the fool ought to be forgiven, if not given plaudits
"I would be happy if someone tried to save me," Kandy Kimball said. "I think he's a good guy. I feel bad for him."
"It's kind of nice that we live in a town where people don't just turn their back and look the other way," David Peterson said. "I don't think he should be charged with three crimes. I would like to see the courts work with him and give the guy a little break."
So this guy pulls a breaking and entering, and an assault with a deadly weapon; at leat that's what it would look like here. One of those is a felony.
But Wisconsin sees it as three misdemeanors.
Me, I see it as a guy who's lucky it wasn't a cry for help, because he seems clueless as to what that sword was good for, and the odds are he'd have gotten hurt.
Someone busts into your house and threatens you with a deadly weapon.
I know what I'd do, and the least of it is going to lead to an arrest.
So, this guy in Wisconsin hears, what he thinks is, a woman sceaming for help from his upstairs neighbor's place.
He grabs a sword, runs up the stairs, kicks in the door, and finds his neighbor watching some porn.
Attempted rescue
On the one level this is commendable, because, so he says, he didn't have a phone. Exigent circumstances allow cops to go busting in, why not John Q. Public?
On another level, it's daft.
I used to be a security guard. To get a license I had to take a test of 25 questions, and miss nary a one (this didn't mean much, it was open book, there was no fee, and one could take it as often as needed... it was scary watching the people taking it, the number who needed to take it 3, 4 a dozen times to pass).
Most of what the test was about was the limits of being a citizen. In Calif. anyone can make an arrest. The requirements are straightforward; a misdemeanor has to be committed in one's presence, a felony requires, "good reason to believe," the person was the perpetrator. Oddly enough these are the requirements (roughly) for cops. They are allowed to make an arrest on a criminal complaint for a misdemeanor, but in that case the person swearing out the complaint is attesting they saw the misdemeanor.
The difference is that cops have some protections if they screw up, John Q. Public doesn't.
The guy says, he froze. He meant to hide the sword (what?) but he froze.
"Van Iveren said Tuesday that he heard a woman "screaming for help," grabbed the sword, bounded up the stairs, kicked in the apartment door and confronted the man who lived there.
"I intended to hold it behind my back and knock. But I froze and instead, what happened happened," he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Contesting his neighbor's account, Van Iveren said he didn't look anywhere in the apartment except the front room, and that he never threatened the neighbor with the sword.
"I had the sword extended. But that was all," he said."
When did he freeze? Before, or after he kicked in the door. He "only extended," the sword. Good. After all, it isn't as if pointing a sword at somone is "doing" anything." We'll just forget that when fencing someone who has, "merely," extended weapon requires that the offending weapon be dealt with... why? Because if you don't deal with it, the person holding it will teach you what it feels like to be a shish-kebab.
There are those who see this as blown all out of proportion, who say the fool ought to be forgiven, if not given plaudits
"I would be happy if someone tried to save me," Kandy Kimball said. "I think he's a good guy. I feel bad for him."
"It's kind of nice that we live in a town where people don't just turn their back and look the other way," David Peterson said. "I don't think he should be charged with three crimes. I would like to see the courts work with him and give the guy a little break."
So this guy pulls a breaking and entering, and an assault with a deadly weapon; at leat that's what it would look like here. One of those is a felony.
But Wisconsin sees it as three misdemeanors.
Me, I see it as a guy who's lucky it wasn't a cry for help, because he seems clueless as to what that sword was good for, and the odds are he'd have gotten hurt.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 01:24 pm (UTC)Well, it wasn't the smartest way to go about an intended rescue. People who train for combat -- martial artists, soldiers, cops (one hopes) -- spend years learning how to think things through in combat situations so that they can react instinctively and hopefully in an appropriate way, and even supposedly trained people act in the worst ways possible. Look at all the stories about cops shooting people who weren't actually threats. (We have a recent local case where a fleeing *unarmed* suspected drug dealer was shot in the back and killed.) I don't know why it should be suprising that some untrained dude waving the family heirloom sword around doesn't know how to handle a weapon or how to respond appropriate to that situation.
The guy wasn't so bright, but no one got hurt and he meant well. And if "intention" matters for other crimes, why can't good intentions help here?
no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 07:14 pm (UTC)He has three misdemeanor charges, I'll wager he gets a fine, some Community Service and probation, not the 33 months in jail he could get (if the sentences were consectutive.
He might get 90 days, consecutive, for 9 months (suspended).
Worst case, he gets about 90 days, concurrent on all three.
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 08:31 pm (UTC)