The cops were called because someone in the trailer park complained about noise. Whether it was worth the life of Michael Sipes is another matter. Radley Balko at the Agitator posts the story.
According to Sipes’ mother and others in the house, the police repeatedly knocked on the door to the home, but never identified themselves. They say both Sipes and his mother asked more than once who was outside. A neighbor who heard the gunshots also says he never heard the police identify themselves. Police officials say the officers did identify themselves.
According to those in the trailer at the time, as the knocks continued, Sipes retrieved a rifle, opened the door, and stepped outside. That’s when Morganton Public Safety Officer Johnny David Cooper II shot Sipes in the stomach “four or five times.”
MIchael Sipes appears to be a good kid, an ROTC member who planned to enlist in the Army. When he opened the door with his new 22 caliber rifle in hand, it was likely just to be safe. When Officer Cooper shot Sipes, it was likely just to be safe. Everybody just wants to be safe. It doesn’t always work out that way.
The key to this horrible story is whether Cooper, knocking at the door, announced that he was a police officer. If so, as the cops claim, then Sipes’ opening the door with a rifle in hand was begging for trouble. But this appears to not to be the case, it making no sense given that Sipes had no reason to challenge the officer and invite death.
[Public Safety Chief Mark} Tolbert said officers don’t have to announce their presence, but said it is the norm for Public Safety officers to identify themselves.
There’s a rationale for an officer knocking, but not announcing their presence. If an officer announces his presence, a person inside can dispose of evidence or prepare to confront the officer at the door, even shooting through a door. But this wasn’t a circumstance that gave rise to any rational basis for concern by Officer Cooper. If he failed to announce who he was, as every other witness states was the case, then it was just a basic failure to do so. There’s no justification for the omission. But, as Tolbert says, they’re not required to do so by law or internal policy.
In the comments to Radley’s post, a question arose relating back to the statement in another situation, another post, that infuriated many.
[Philadelphia Police] Lt. Fran Healy, special adviser to the police commissioner, acknowledged that some city cops apparently are unfamiliar with some concealed-carry permits. But he said that it’s better for cops to “err on the side of caution.”
“Officers’ safety comes first, and not infringing on people’s rights comes second,” Healy said.
The reaction is that this is so utterly wrong as to be outrageous. Whether one considers this from a pragmatic or ideological perspective is irrelevant. It is the first rule of policing, get home for dinner. I’ve written about this many times, and have yet to be told by a cop that he disagrees. No police officer will risk his life to safeguard a civilian’s rights. The first order of business for every police officer, as Lt. Healy candidly admits, is officer safety.
This holds true whether it’s the citizen who makes the critical error or the cop. The linchpin in the killing of Michael Sipes was Officer Cooper’s failure to announce that he was a police officer. Had he done so, Sipes would not have opened the door with a rifle in his hands, and instead would have gotten an earful about keeping the noise down. It would have ended with Sipes saying, “Yes, Sir, It won’t happen again.” Nobody gets hurt.
The law doesn’t require police officers to risk their lives. Many of the exceptions to the Fourth Amendment are openly predicated on officer safety, the most obvious being a weapons frisk if an officer has a reasonable suspicion that a person is armed. Joining the police department isn’t a suicide pact. Nor does any reasonable person think it should be.
There are times when police officers risk their lives for others. An officer may run into a burning building to save a baby, or confront an armed robber to prevent a bystander from being harmed. And there are times when a police officer’s life is lost as a result. Danger is inherent in the job, and that’s the risk they chose when they put on the shield. But to the extent they can minimize the risk, you can bet your life they will. No cop will knowingly allow his children to go fatherless if he has a chance to prevent it.
The failing here was clearly the officer’s failure to announce, and that failure is attributable to policy and training. In light of what happened, there can be no doubt that a clear policy of announcing that a person is a police officer, in the absence of a reasonable justification to conceal that fact, would have prevented this tragedy. With shocking frequency, stories of such tragedy involve a statement by the cops that the officer complied with department policy.
The solution is sound, thoughtful policy, designed to accomplish officer safety, public safety and protection of civil rights. The problem here is that policy is established, too often to the extent it exists at all, without sufficient thought or concern for the latter two aspects. Policy is developed for effective policing, officer safety and compliance with mandatory legal requirements. There are occasionally other factors, like public relations, tossed in, but rarely does any police department give serious thought to how its policies give rise to potential problems or harm.
I’ve no doubt that nobody, police or civilian, views the killing of 17 year old Michael Sipes as anything other than a tragedy. Perhaps there will be a change of policy at the local level as a result, but it will be too late to help one young man. Then again, chances are slim, really non-existent, that this tragedy will give rise to any police department engaging in a comprehensive review of its policies, with input by civilians whose concerns might transcend the easiest thing for cops and the first rule of policing, to prevent it from happening again.
And don’t even ask about policy relating to high speed car chases, one of the most dangerous things cops can do when it comes to needless harm to innocent bystanders. Police policy cannot be left exclusively in the hands of the cops, as they simply don’t see or care enough about the potential for harm to others. Rather than rant about how cops put their own safety first, it would be more beneficial to address how cops just don’t think about the potential for needless harm to others when they could follow their first rule without needlessly sacrificing another 17 year old.
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It’s not fair to frame this as a ‘knock and announce’ issue — that’s a fourth amendment rule for executing warrants. This was not the execution of a warrant. Whether the police are liable for damages resulting from their failure to announce their presence before the door was opened is a question of simple negligence. References to the constitutional standard clouds the issue.
I’d read this story about Sipes a few days ago and again wondered what would have happened in this type of situation had nobody answered the door. Could it have become a stand-off type situation because of loud music? After a while, if the kid and his mother had turned off the music and the lights and went to bed would the police have determined the crisis had passed and went home?
Speculatively, concerning your commentary about frisks based on reasonable suspicion and merely addressed to officer safety, warrantless weapons frisks based on reasonable suspicion and not incident to an arrest should be illegal. The standard would be raised to probable cause, an articuable showing of why the LEO suspects the person has a weapon.
Although a requirement to get a warrant for a weapons frisk, or a frisk for other purposes such as drugs, based on reasonable suspicion would be very burdensome I think that officer safety would be increased. My general perception from what I’ve read about the stop, question and frisk going on in some cities near low income or public housing is that an extremely small number of people frisked are carrying weapons. I think that a suspect in possession of a weapon, or drugs, would be less likely to react violently to being stopped by police were the suspect sure that the officer had a burdensome procedure to follow prior to searching them, causing in the officer an aversion to requesting a warrant .
I’d really like to see some accurate figures about unarmed citizens being shot by police because the police officer merely had a suspicion that the citizen had a weapon. The suspicion standard is too low. In the interests of officer safety the probable cause standard articulated well enough to secure a warrant should be applied to all searches, for any reason.
This has nothing to do with warrants or law. This post is about sound formulation of police policy that protects both officers and civilians. Focus.
Also worth mentioning is that the police officers didn’t have to shoot the moment they saw a gun. It’s not sound policing to shoot everyone who has a gun, just because they might use it.
Do we know whether Sipes even pointed the gun at anyone, or did he just brandish it?
Good police officers need to exercise judgment. I don’t know that these officers made terrible choices, but they certainly failed to make good ones. Let’s hope that the problems police officers solve are important enough to make up pointless deaths such as this one.
I hope the neighbors who called the police because they felt that 3 children (aged 4 months to 6 years) were playing too loud feel appropriately horrible over the tragic events that they (however inadvertently) kicked off.
This point gets a bit sticky. The police don’t have to wait for the other guy to pull the trigger before they shoot, for obvious reasons. It may well be that Sipes had the gun pointed down, finger off the trigger, so as to hold it but in a non-threatening way. If so, then the justifiction diminishes to some extent. But we don’t know what happened and will never know, so it’s not particularly useful to engage in rank speculation. Still, there’s never anything wrong with police officers exercising sound judgment. That goes for the rest of us as well.
No doubt they do, but it’s wrong to suggest they bear any responsibility for this. They are entitled to quiet enjoyment, and the proper way to deal with a disturbance by someone else is to call the cops.
Not my favorite Zappa song, by the way.
Really, Scott? The proper way to deal with children playing too loudly is to call the cops? What about knocking on your neighbor’s door and asking them to keep it down? We don’t need to be completely dependent on the government to regulate every aspect of our behavior or referee every dispute we have. Its the same reason that guy at the US Open needed to get his ass kicked.
There’s nothing wrong with knocking on a neighbor’s door and asking them to keep it down, though in this case the police had been called in (according to the cops) twice before within a month already. But a neighbor isn’t required to try the neighborly thing first. Calling the cops is an appropriate alternative, especially to showing up with a gun of his own or to face down a person with a gun at the door.
That doesn’t make someone “dependent on the government,” but allows them to use the government for its intended purpose. And it’s got nothing to do with the guy at the US Open. The neighbor isn’t asking the cops to shoot the guy. What a bizarre comparison to make.
I just disagree that the government’s intended purpose is to be a babysitter and referee of adults. The comparison was that I don’t think you need to call security or the police to quiet down a loud asshole and that was where I disagreed with your “it is never ok to hit someone” line. It may not be, but it should be. People should do more policing of themselves and depend less on the government to do so.
I did not know the part about the cops having been called twice within a month already. That could mean the folks who were called on were noisy pricks who needed the cops to intervene or it could mean the neighbors were the kind of pricks who constantly make noise complaints to the police.
Great idea. We’ll just walk around and blow each other’s heads off whenever somebody annoys us. Very convincing, Lee.
Yes, this was precisely what I advocated, Scott. great counterpoint.
How about we call the police every time our neighbor closes the door too loudly, as you’ve clearly advocated? Great points.
Sorry, Lee, but some of your ideas are incredibly naive. This is one of them, and it doesn’t help to stamp your feet.
I wasn’t stamping my feet, but its difficult to actually engage on the issue when you bastardize the point I made which was, simply, that the people can do a much better job of enforcing our own social norms than we’ve been coddled to believe by a government that wants to be the solution to EVERY problem. That wasn’t me saying any time somebody makes you mad you should resort to physical violence.
One of the (more useful) functions of the police is to resolve disputes between people. It’s not for you (or me) to sit in judgment of whether a dispute is “police worthy,” and if someone decides that a situation requires the police, they’re entitled to seek their intervention. Whether it could have been handled without police isn’t the issue; they are allowed to call if they (not you or me) think it the better choice.
You think a noise disturbance was unworthy? That’s fine for you, but who are you to judge for others? But if you decided to go over there and the guy at the door confronted you with a gun (as here), it’s hardly far-fetched to suggest that someone could end up shot or dead. That’s what guns do. Of course you don’t advocate shooting each other, but you don’t recognize that violence is one of the the logical outcomes of your choice to go it alone when there is a dispute between people. Sometimes, disputes are worked out in a friendly, neighborly way. Other times, people get hurt or killed. That’s how it happens.
Of course, you recognize the difficulty of arguing this in the situation where the police (who usually carry guns) were called and killed someone?
An irony indeed, but we both know that we can’t indulge in inductive reasoning.
I firstly want to start by saying how sad I am for the death of Mr. Sipes. I am truly saddened that he is dead, and I think it is needless. Shame on the police if they didn’t announce themselves, as all witnesses excepting the police themselves recount.
Unfortunately, Mr. Sipes death highlights a real danger of guns. Threatening force with a gun invites instant use of a gun against you. For this reason, I have grave concerns about guns as a weapon. If you have a gun, and a person threatens you with a gun, it is quite rational to instantly shoot them.
The natural law of the situation supports instant shooting (if you think the odds of the person threatening you taking a shot are higher than your odds of getting off a disabling shot, you should take it!), and our common law and often statutory law supports this type of shooting.
It sucks. I like it when natural and statutory law both slant towards savings lives and preventing injuries. I want to avoid being in the situation described above.
Not everyone will agree, but my decision is to not carry or own guns for defense purposes. I believe to be used effectively, you have to shoot instantly without threatening use of the gun against a violent intruder. I have too many second thoughts, and too little courage to do that. So I don’t have a gun.