Love guns or hate them, the issue is settled that a person has a fundamental right to possess a gun within his home for self-defense. And that right of self-defense means that when there’s a knock on a door in the middle of the night in a neighborhood that isn’t the safest in town, 26-year-old Andrew Lee Scott was fully within his right to answer the door with gun in hand.
And he lost his life for the exercise of a fundamental right.
From WESH.com in Orlando :
In the early-morning hours, deputies knocked on 26-year-old Andrew Lee Scott’s door without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers. Scott answered the door with a gun in his hand.
“When we knocked on the door, the door opened and the occupant of that apartment was pointing a gun at deputies, and that’s when we opened fire and killed him,” Lt. John Herrell said. “Even though this subject is not the one we were looking for when he opened the door. He was pointing the gun at the deputy and if you put yourselves in the deputy’s shoes. They were there to pick up someone who was wanted for an attempted homicide.”
Officials said the deputies did not identify themselves because of safety reasons.
Safety for the officers came at the expense of safety for Scott, but the First Rule of Policing precludes anything else. Curiously, the two officers knocked on Scott’s door because they thought an individual wanted to attempted murder might be inside. Outside, directly across from the door, was the motorcycle of the wanted man.
Rather than call for backup and wait, or bring in a tank, the SWAT team or any of the other protective military tactics commonly employed when raiding a home in search of a possible marijuana possessor, the two officers decided to go it alone. Apparently, attempted murder isn’t nearly as scary to cops as Reefer Madness, and they plowed ahead in the wee hours of the morning to find out if their wanted man was inside.
Lt. Herrell asks us to put ourselves in the deputy’s shoes. It’s understandable, as they were looking for a person who might be inclined to do some harm and were confronted with a man with a gun. But then, if we put ourselves in Scott’s shoes, a knock on the door in the same wee hours of the morning, in a neighborhood that harbors attempted murderers, with no announcement (for safety, of course) that the hands doing the knocking belonged to cops rather than criminals, it’s similarly understandable why Scott was cautious in opening his door and decided to exercise his right to protect himself from potential harm.
“It’s just a bizarre set of circumstances. The bottom line is, you point a gun at a deputy sheriff or police office, you’re going to get shot,” Herrell said.
Or to put it another way, if you are a law-abiding citizen within your own home and exercise a fundamental constitutional right, it may be the last thing you do. Andrew Lee Scott was entirely within his rights to do as he did, but that doesn’t make him any less dead.
In light of Heller, and particularly in those parts of the country where lawful possession of a gun is more commonplace and, one would think, likely to be anticipated, scenarios such as this would be expected and procedures in place to assure that innocent homeowners aren’t gunned down in the doorway for surprising a cop with a gun.
In this instance, had the officers called for backup before attempting to ascertain whether their bad guy was in Scott’s home, they would have been able to safely announce they were police and Scott would have known who was knocking on the door. Presumably, he wouldn’t have felt the need to answer the door with his gun in hand, and they could have all had a good laugh about their mistake afterward.
The responsibility for initiating action that isn’t going to end with the death of an innocent citizen in his home is on the police. That these cops may have been surprised and afraid is indeed understandable, but then, that was their choice. No one forced them to approach without putting in an iota of thought about what they were about to do, what would happen if they were wrong.
Had Scott come to the door unarmed, but with his finger pointed in just the right way, the same result might have happened. And the official police response would have been the same, that they were placed in fear of their life and fired to protect themselves. That Scott had a gun, as he was lawfully entitled, doesn’t make his death any more acceptable.
Contrary to the official explanation, the only side in this debacle that could have prevented the needless killing of Andrew Lee Scott was the police. Scott didn’t ask to have the wanted man’s motorcycle parked across from his door. Scott didn’t ask the cops to knock on his door in the middle of the night. Scott didn’t ask the police to knock without announcing their purpose. Scott didn’t ask to die.
And yet, the only dead body was that of Andrew Lee Scott. The possession of a right should never result in something so wrong, and it is solely the responsibility of the police to assure that it doesn’t.
Postscript: Since an innocent man was killed, it’s obligatory on the part of the police to smear him with utterly irrelevant allegations, just so no one feels particularly badly about the loss of life. And so it happens here :
Drugs and other paraphernalia were found during a search of Scott’s apartment. The victim has a criminal history of drug-related arrests, the sheriff’s office said. Neighbors told News 13 Scott lived with his girlfriend and was a delivery driver at Hungry Howie’s.
To say this adds insult to injury is too trite. That it isn’t enough for the police to have killed Andrew Lee Scott for nothing, but that they are compelled to trash him as well, to justify their killing by suggesting his death was no big loss and that he was a criminal in his own right, is disgusting.
Forgive me this suggestion, but when a cop is killed in the line of duty, does the media announce how many times he beat his wife? This disclosure, if accurate, is patently offensive, utterly unnecessary and an insult to all who read it.
H/T FritzMuffKnuckle
Update: After capturing the neighbor and charging him with attempted murder, they figured out they made a mistake and all charges were dropped. Just one more needless dead body, a casualty in the war.
That’s just bad police work. That’s all that boils down to,” said Brown.
The dismissal of the Leesburg Police Department’s charges against Jonathan Brown does not impact the situation involving Scott in any way.
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation cleared the deputy who shot Scott…
Casualties happen in war, they say, but it’s not “just bad police work” when you happen to be the dead man.
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The actions of the police following this shooting are especially appalling. It’s not just smear the victim, it’s also blame the victim:
Police spokesman Ryan Perry, “He was the wrong guy and he got shot and killed anyway. There’s fault on both sides.”
As Scott points out, his actions were entirely within his rights. I hope the media takes them to task and ask exactly what the victim did wrong and why it’s relevant to release an innocent victim’s criminal record.
You’re absolutely right, there is no fault whatsoever on the part of Andrew Lee Scott, and the uncritical reporting of this assertion, together with the smearing of the victim, is wholly irresponsible.
Hopefully the jury sitting on the wrongful death lawsuit will find it sufficient reason to tack another zero on the punitive damages.
Adding a zero onto the end of other zeroes doesn’t do much.
A series of 9’s would be more appealing. Somewhere between six to eight of them would be just, I think.
I normally try to stand up for police officers- I think they get a bad rap a lot of times. A lot of things they do can be justified, but this isn’t one of them. Shooting a man who’s answering his door, when you didn’t identify yourself, in a bad neighborhood… yeah, the police screwed up massively here.
OK Scott so what’s the solution in your opinion? Get rid of anachronistic immunities for leos?Should the legislature create specific rights to sue on for leo negligence or other torts (something with more teeth than federal 1983)?
Sir, something definitely stinks when ‘two’ cops (one being a Lt.) avoid an opportunity to gear up and knock down a door to catch a bad guy. Boasting eagerly as they admitted to killing a man answering his door with an object in his hands might be a case for looking into mandatory bullhorns for all, along with drug & steroid testing of killers.
*In the great state of confusion aka: Tx., fake cops & home invasions force the utilization of peepholes and the old school yell – “who the fuck is it?” prior to opening doors. Everyone has an object & everyone knows it, including the cops. They use this as a reason to dress up and play army vs. simplistic non-violent methods. If someone / anyone / anything gets killed they rattle off one of two nationally recognized excuses / explanations. Rinse & Repeat.
R.I.P. Mr. Andrew Lee Scott
While limited immunity has to go for this and about a thousand other reasons, I’m thinking more about how to save lives rather than sue afterward. Like better training, policies, oversight, and getting rid of blithering idiots with guns and shields.
I’m curious about your “normally” trying to “stand up for police officers.” It seems to me that one should stand up for them when they’re right, and not when they’re wrong. What possible purpose would be served otherwise?
Sorry for not clarifying- I stand up for them when I believe they’re in the right, and others may not necessarily agree. I don’t and wouldn’t stand up for anyone if I believed they were in the wrong.
I mean, I believe people misinterpret a lot of police actions and in many cases fail to understand the reasons for their actions, and the reason why certain actions of theirs- although controversial- are necessary.
This, again, is not one of those cases where there are shades of grey- this is a very black-and-white, open-and-shut case of a police officer murdering someone. Perhaps while in fear for his life, but they murdered a man in while the man was in his own home, without identifying themselves as police, without a single element of caution or wisdom on the part of the officers to mitigate their conduct.
Thanks for the clarification. I agree with you to an extent, though I often find the police rationale unduly forgiving toward them at the expense of others. They have reasons, but not what I consider sound reasons. For example, I am not inclined to place the life of a police officer above anyone else. Nor do I consider the “difficulty” of their job an excuse for abuse and violence. Nor do I ascribe to their “ends justify the means” for framing the guilty. That sort of stuff.
My tentative analysis:
The fact that no policemen got shot leads me to a first tentative conclusion:
1. The victim didn’t really open the door with his gun pointed at the policemen (although they probably had their guns pointed at him).
The fact that the police admit they did not announce, but also say that the victim pointed his gun leads me to two more tentative conclusions:
2. There is almost certainly an audio recording of this event, but
3. No video.
As far as solutions to prevent this from happening again:
Statutes requiring a/v recording, by the police, on all knock and talks and all residential warrant service.
That about covers it.
Even if they shouted “Police!” I would want to check their authenticity by calling 911 before opening the door. Would they shoot me for that, too?
One more comment now that I have done more reading on this story:
The police did not say that Scott opened the door. instead they said that they knocked on the door and the door opened.
The phrasing on that may well be meaningful.
There’s a common theme to media reporting on police conduct where its written passively. It may mean something, or it may just reflect the typical “things magically happen on their own” style of reporting.
I think the convention is a little more nuanced than that. I think things are written passively when it makes the story more favorable for police. When the passive voice does not help police, it is not used.
In this case, it would have been favorable to the police to say that the victim opened the door. But, the police p.r. people did not say that. This is part of the reason that I suspect that Scott did not answer the door. They don’t pass up opportunities like that without a reason.
I know that when police came knocking on my door at 1:30 am, the knocking was so hard that I thought the door would come open or fall down. The only reason I put down my knife before answering approaching the door was because I saw the telltale red lights from the police car playing on the blinds.
This doesn’t mean that police definitely forced entry, but I think suspicion on this point is reasonable.
I agree with you on this one.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear.
Instead of five million, fifty.
First, you have to eliminate the IQ ceiling in the hiring process. This is not the time to implement Six Sigma.
You were clear. And a bit optimistic.
Sir, for some reason this murder in particular has inspired me to go an extra mile. I found a bullhorn at Goodwill and shipped it off to “Dirty Herrell” AKA: Lt. John Herrell along with an extra copy of a book on surveillance techniques.
If I was financially able, I’d supply each & every officer with their very own personalized set (including one of those electronic dog repellants because they could’ve killed his pet) & do so in person in the names’ of the deceased. This is truly one hellova knock knock F-Story & it aint no joke. Hopefully others will stand up even if it’s only to make sure this SJ Blawg Post goes mega-viral,forcing the un-embedded media to jump on the bandwagon. Thanks again.