Home invasion by cops?

This comes up from time to time. With that said, I am not trained to lay down my gun ever. I have never had surrender training.

Our local street cops and deputies don't do dynamic entries, generally speaking. They get their SWAT guys to do it. If folks are doing a dynamic entry and aren't SWAT, then they likely aren't cops, regardless of what they say. They won't be coming with just 2 guys either. I realize that this isn't a perfect criterion, but then again, there is no reason for cops to be coming into my home either.
 
Unless you are living where you have Andy and Barney for police protection I would have to agree with Double Naught Spy's assessment.
 
Home invasion by cops?
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I presume you mean, "Home invasion by armed criminals pretending to be cops..." and not, "Forced entry by police officers with criminal intent..." The latter is even more improbable than the former, and is something I'm just not gonna worry about.

Double Naught Spy said:
This comes up from time to time way too often.
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There, fixed it for you... :)

For a long discussion of this topic, this very month, see this thread.

:rolleyes:
 
There are a couple of problems with it. It only works for doors that open inwards and does nothing for windows.
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Absolutely. However, doors are the key entry points. Windows should be locked. Yes, they can be broken and a BG climbs through, but it makes a racket and it takes a little longer to climb into a window. Being armed 24x7 or at least during all waking hours is a good preventative.

There are a host of other preventative measures, but this isn't the thread for it. You made a good point that police entries are generally made by SWAT. A good clue is when the "police" is wearing hoodies.
 
If you don't sell drugs then it's highly unlikely that fake cops (or real ones, for that matter) will be kicking down your door to get your stash.
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There ya go. :)

Oh, wait, the real address was to your neighbors house, nevermind. :D
 
Here's a wrinkle: how about the police executing a no-notice on the wrong home...specifically, YOUR home .... based on faulty intel?
 
I was always told to make sure the warrant is signed. Because cops will try to bust in your house, and show you a unsigned warrant.
 
It does happen,,,

Here's a wrinkle: how about the police executing a no-notice on the wrong home...specifically, YOUR home .... based on faulty intel?
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So how do you think those heavily armed cops are going to react when you (that's a generic you) starts firing at them?

My friend, there ain't no way to prepare for that type of random event,,,
But I'm fairly certain that the last thing I am going to do is start blasting away.

I have my bedroom pistol in a rail holster,,,
When they make it to my bedroom all they will find is,,,
A fat middle-aged man cowering against the wall under his covers,,,
With a 16 round magazine inserted into a CZ-75B ready to shoot through the sheets.

If they are cops I will drop the pistol on the mattress and surrender,,,
If they are bad guys I'll probably go out in a big blaze of glory,,,
But the point is I ain't shooting until I know who they are.

The last thing I want to do (as a man who wants to survive) is shoot at cops,,,
Them boys will kill you in a heartbeat and get away with it as well.

Aarond
 
Our local street cops and deputies don't do dynamic entries, generally speaking. They get their SWAT guys to do it. If folks are doing a dynamic entry and aren't SWAT, then they likely aren't cops, regardless of what they say. They won't be coming with just 2 guys either. I realize that this isn't a perfect criterion, but then again, there is no reason for cops to be coming into my home either.
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This is not always the case. I work on a smaller department, but certainly not Mayberry sized. We have around 50 sworn personel, but we hardly ever do dynamic entries with our entry team unless it's part of a pre-planned raid. If I happen to see Jo-blow with 8 felony warrants on him enter a house (which at times would even give PC for warrantless entry, depending), we're not going to call in the entry team to come take it down. The officers on the squad working will go in. Our entry or SWAT team is a volunteer team that performs that function on top of their normal duties. Some of them are on patrol, some are investigators, and other are Narcotics. It would take several hours to gather that crowd in. If it were a hostage situation, then yes. Serving a spur of the moment search or arrest warrant, no.

Just clarifying that it's probably a good idea to listen to the ordinary, plain janed, uniformed police unless you determine they are posers. Don't pay as much attention to the uniform as their actions. If the door of your house has been kicked in and people are in your house, but they've not announced themselves as Police, then you've probably got serious problems.
 
+1 what 5Whiskey said. Exigent circumstances can and do happen, though that's not that common and most places that kind of response is the realm of uniformed patrol officers, not detectives or other folks in plain clothes.

If you don't sell drugs then it's highly unlikely that fake cops (or real ones, for that matter) will be kicking down your door to get your stash.
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+1. Most home invasions are targeted and drug related. The article the OP quoted sounds sort of suspicious to me -- tortured by the invaders to find out where their "stuff" was, $4000 in cash on hand, all three working what sound like pretty menial jobs. Perhaps they're immigrants who don't use banks, perhaps they have a cash intensive secondary source of income. Either way, it seems likely they were targeted by people who knew enough about them to know they had portable wealth on hand (+/- drugs as well perhaps).

Which suggests some broader ideas on how not to be the victim of this sort of thing beyond just not working in the drug trade. There was another thread recently about the Florida beauty queen who shot a home invasion robber -- good on her for the shooting, but she and her fiance pretty much painted a huge target on themselves.

  • They live in a big house in a wealthy neighborhood, kind of hard to fault them for that, but . . .
  • She answers a knock at the front door at 3 AM?
  • She sports a $60K engagement ring, apparently all the time?
  • They pay their pizza delivery guy with $100 bills?

All of which doesn't just say "I am wealthy" but "I have cash and serious jewelry on hand in my residence." The former doesn't really jazz up home invasion robbers, I wouldn't think -- you're not likely to commit go to jail forever level felonies on a fishing expedition that might pay off. The latter, apparently, does attract the attention of such folks.

So people should ask themselves what can the pizza delivery guy tell about you when you come to the door to pay? If you've got teenage kids -- what do their friends know about what you have and where you keep it? Does anyone else have routine access to the inside of your house for legitimate reasons who might see things that might attract burglars or robbers? (Guns accessible outside a safe? Prescription narcotics or other pharmaceuticals? Evidence of other valuables?)

Oh, wait, the real address was to your neighbors house, nevermind.
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Realistically, this is a remote issue in any case, but with real deal criminals I think it is incredibly remote -- if only because the guys doing the close-in recce on the target house are probably part of the group doing the actual hit. With law enforcement, if the department is big enough, you get that risk that vice/narcotics/whoever developed the info about the target house and then unrelated SWAT types do the raid -- or whatever other variation of that story plays out.

It's a tough scene anyway you slice it though -- and lots of room for very bad decisions to be made in a few split seconds on both sides. Thankfully it happens very rarely, and when it does the people doing the raid are almost always unmistakably police.
 
This is why a door brace is an essential item for every outside facing door in one's home.
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There are a couple of problems with it. It only works for doors that open inwards and does nothing for windows.
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I have them on all my doors to the exterior. And screw type locks on every window (and some home-made battering rams to knock the windows out, in case of fire). And dogs. And shrubbery. They don't solve every problem, but every little obstacle helps. If I can't stop 'em, I'll slow 'em down and make 'em noisy, while I go hide under the covers with aarondgraham. :D
 
Realistically, this is a remote issue in any case, but with real deal criminals I think it is incredibly remote
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Actually, I think it could/would be more likely. We used to live on a dead end road where the former residents of the last house on the road were apparently selling drugs at a pretty good clip (and we all just thought they were popular :) ).They moved/left, somebody new moved in, and for a couple of months, they were constantly running people off wanting to buy drugs.

The police end of it happening, well, you dont hear it "all" the time, but you hear it enough to know whats being referred to without to much surprise.

A quick call to 911 (if you have it) should settle things pretty quick, if theres time.

A good reason to have an early warning system either way.
 
One thing you can do in circumstances where you have people representing themselves as police pounding on your door or forcing their way in is to call 911, tell them you think you might be the victim of a home invasion robbery, leave the line open and comply with the officers or maybe officers demands.

If it is a legitimate raid, the open line to 911 would create at least a limited additional recording of what occurred above and beyond whatever audio the officers on scene are running. That might be beneficial if it's a case of mistaken addresses or whatever.

If it's not a legitimate raid you'll get a police response. The one vaguely similar call I was on our dispatchers had patrol officers en route as soon as they got a report of something that might be law enforcement activity or maybe not, while they double checked with our cool kids (drug unit, gang unit, etc) and called federal agencies, other local LE agencies, etc., to make sure there wasn't some sort of miscommunication.

So at least in that one case, reaction time wasn't even altered from what it normally would be.
 
Police accidentally doing a no-knock raid on your house is a terrible situation to be in. For one you probably aren't expecting police to be busting down your door. At least if you are dealin dope you can expect the police bust in. Two you won't know what the hell is going on and will probably be diving for the closest firearm. Three you won't know its the real police, unless you really believe someone kicking in your door yelling "police". They don't usually kick in innocent peoples doors.

The hot setup is to have your exterior doors fortified, and potentially your bedroom door fortified and locked while you sleep. Cops gotta tear down the outside door which will wake you, then they gotta tear down the bedroom door which will take much longer. Hopefully by then you realize what the hell is going on, but still do you surrender?

Start screaming that you have a firearm and to back the hell off! Chances are if they start hammering on a bedroom door, can't get it open cause the damn thing is solid has a deadbolt and a metal frame, then are hearing someone screaming about loaded guns they will stop.

Innocent people have shot police during erroneous no-knock raids, then later been convicted with their murders. Police have shot and killed innocent people during erroneous no knock raids. It happens... wrong address. "oops!"
 
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