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Author Topic: Attempted home entry Richard Hamilton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1341 From: Evansville, Indiana Registered: Jan 2000 posted 07-29-2011 05:48 AM                     I'm staying at my parents house and at 2 a.m., my nephew and brother wake me up and say someone was trying to get in the front door. I jump up, slip on some shoes and run outside. It's an older neighborhood with lots of lakes and wooded areas. First I walk around, then drive around. My nephew said the front door was pushed and then the door knob started jiggling. Then a couple minutes later the door knob was jiggling again. I called the Sheriffs Command Post and they added extra patrol to the neighborhood for the night. I called my brother and nephew pussies and went back to bed. I would've opened the door to see who was there . Even though everyone in the court system says my dad is one of the fairest and most reasonable judges, I still always worry about his safety. Who knows how many people he's sent to jail or felt they got the wrong decision? He's had threatening calls at home before. In grade school a friend of mines dad was an ex Mayor, he was killed at home. Rick Hamilton, Bodyguard  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-29-2011 08:16 AM                     I'm not trying to minimize the fact that you have had threats and problems in the past but it's not good to assume the worst without considering all the possibilities. If it is an older neighborhood you should consider the possibility that it was some old person with Alzheimer's Disease or something like that who got lost and was trying to find his way home. It also could have been just a run-of-the-mill burglar. That having been said, I'm still on your side. I would have gone upstairs to get some hardware then called the cops. If the guy did get in, I would have been waiting for him at the doorway. From there, let's just say we would handle the situation accordingly... if you get my meaning. The Pennsylvania legislature recently reauthorized the "Castle Doctrine." Shortly, thereafter, they also extended it to cover situations outside the home. The bottom line is that any law abiding citizen of Pennsylvania has the right to use any and all legal means of defense to protect life, property and the lives of others in his sphere of influence from any reasonable danger. Specifically, a homeowner has the right to assume that anybody who comes inside his home without permission intends to do him and his family harm. This was formerly known as the "Make My Day" law but it has since been changed to "Castle Doctrine." The difference, beside the name, is that the homeowner now has the responsibility to take steps to prevent a catastrophe such as giving fair warning but the bottom line is still the same. If somebody comes inside your house, you can assume that he is up to no good and you can do what is necessary to stop him.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-29-2011 10:41 AM                        Maybe it was Nick Nolte, or Jeffrey Tambor.  |  IP: Logged Sam Graham AKA: "The Evil Sam Graham". Wackiness ensues. Posts: 1431 From: Waukee, IA Registered: Dec 2004 posted 07-29-2011 10:53 AM                        I used to work at a radio station whose building was at our rural tower site a few miles south of town near nothing. We used to occasionally get people walking by whose cars had broken down somewhere down the road, peeking in the windows, trying the door, looking for help. I happened to catch one group coming in the middle of the night and waited around the corner as they approached the windows. With their heads against the glass trying to look in, I swung around full force at the window screaming and making a horrible face. Scared the crap out of them. Then I gave them a ride into town. We also had one night where a group showed up when the guy working 7-midnight had his car warming up. They just took his car and drove themselves into town, leaving it in the parking lot of a local supermarket.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 07-29-2011 01:51 PM                        I used to think that it was convenient for people who live in rural areas to be near the highway. Less snow to push in the winter because it's not far to the main road and so on. Then a friend of mine who lived beside the highway told me that he got people ringing the doorbell and hammering on his door at all hours throughout the night on a surprisingly regular basis. "Car is stuck" "Ran out of gas" and so on. After that I changed my mind about how convenient it would be. If I lived in a rural area I would want to be far enough off of the main road to be out of sight.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-29-2011 03:27 PM                        Yup, my grandparents lived in the country and remember it was a pretty regular thing for some tourist to stop by needing gas, directions, car repair, or "a few bucks."  |  IP: Logged Richard Hamilton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1341 From: Evansville, Indiana Registered: Jan 2000 posted 07-30-2011 02:18 PM                     When I ran outside, I grabbed a flashlight and it only lit up about 2 feet in front of me. Yesterday I bought a 5 million candle power spotlight. From the back porch I can melt the neighbors vinyl siding . I told my nephew if it ever happens again, don't turn anything on, just wake me up. At least I can blind him and beat him with the spotlight  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-30-2011 09:45 PM                        quote: he Pennsylvania legislature recently reauthorized the "Castle Doctrine." Shortly, thereafter, they also extended it to cover situations outside the home. The bottom line is that any law abiding citizen of Pennsylvania has the right to use any and all legal means of defense to protect life, property and the lives of others in his sphere of influence from any reasonable danger. Specifically, a homeowner has the right to assume that anybody who comes inside his home without permission intends to do him and his family harm. But I am not a homeowner....I rent; I'm screwed! Then again, I just assumed that was always the case, no? -- that you can defend yourself from an intruder who is tresspassing on your property. They needed a special law in PA? Or was it during an election year and the legislators needed some feel-good issue they could trumpet to make them look like they were actually DOING something. Easier to pass a law that says people can protect themselves from intruders rather than putting more cops on the beat, but then that's just cynical me.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-30-2011 10:17 PM                     quote: Frank Angel They needed a special law in PA? Not really but Castle Doctrine basically says you can shoot any bastard who comes into your house and nobody will ask questions.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-30-2011 11:52 PM                        "Any and all legal means?" That sounds like a lawyer's dream come true.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-31-2011 07:00 AM                     So long as the rifle or shotgun has a barrel longer than 18 inches and does not fire more than one round for each pull of the trigger it is legal. Get my drift?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 07-31-2011 11:15 AM                     Oklahoma has had a similar "castle doctrine" law on the books for a few years now. Oklahoma also has a "stand your ground" law which allows citizens to defend themselves even with deadly force outside the home. But these laws do not allow citizens to go off like loose cannons to any kind of threat at all. We're still subject to the same "reasonable use of deadly force" rules law enforcement officers have to follow. If I'm ever in a situation where I have to defend myself using a handgun or shotgun I still have to be very damned sure I'm making the right call by pulling the trigger. The police and possibly the courts are still going to investigate the crap out of the incident. Two years ago a drug store manager in Oklahoma City shot and killed one of two young men who tried to rob his store. The manager was later convicted of first degree murder. In the initial firefight the manager hit one of the robbers, one who didn't have a gun. The wounded guy fell to the floor. The armed accomplice fled. The manager ran outside, came back into the store, walked back to his office and returned to shoot the wounded man five more times. That's what got the manager convicted of murder. The threat was already stopped, but the manager chose to finish off the guy with a few more rounds of handgun ammo. Law enforcement personnel are trained to shoot to stop, not kill. The end results may be the same with the shooting death of a criminal. But the motivation in how that criminal winds up dead is different. It's legal to shoot to neutralize a deadly threat. If the person presenting the threat dies then that's just incidental. It's not legal to shoot with malice. You can't shoot a bad guy a few times in the chest and then walk up and fire a coup de grace shot into his head. You'll go to jail for a stunt like that. What really sucks is that if a home owner shoots an intruder in perfectly clean fashion and then the intruder survives the homeowner may go broke defending himself from various law suits. That creates an additional motive for citizens to make sure they kill an assailant instead of letting him live. I wonder if that's one of the reasons why that drug store manager in Oklahoma City did what he did in that shooting. Why leave a wounded robber alive if he could sue you out of business?  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-31-2011 04:44 PM                        Well, maybe that's what the castle laws should address --not so much emphasizing that you have the right to defend your life and property from intruders (as I said, I thought that was always a given right), but instead the law should make it clear that whatever happens in the course of you defending yourself within the parameters of "reasonable use of deadly force," cannot then come back in any retribution, which when such counter-suits do happen, are only possible because of legal loopholes. Castle laws should close those loopholes and afford an iron-clad protection against punitive such counter suits -- no counter suing, not by the perp nor the damn state. That would take away the bizarre incentive you pointed out. If any law or set of laws is structured in such a way that it creates a diabolical incentive for someone who has just shot an intruder in the chest and is on the floor incapacitated, to then walk over and shot him in the head for fear the "justice system" will come to bite him in the ass, then those are VERY bad laws and need to be corrected.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-31-2011 10:25 PM                     That's the thing. With castle doctrine, absent an extenuating circumstance like a guy with Alzheimer's Disease trying to find his way home, there is a presumption that a person inside your house without your permission means to do you harm. It does not provide an excuse to bypass reasonable use of force but it protects a person who does use force from prosecution or lawsuits.  |  IP: Logged Jim Cassedy Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1661 From: San Francisco, CA Registered: Dec 2006 posted 08-01-2011 09:45 AM                     I live in a nice, old (1926) 4-unit apartment building in what is considered to be one of San Francisco's better, safer neighborhoods. But I arrived home late one night after work around 2am and found this broken screwdriver wedged in the front door of my buidling: And- - Fortunately, the combination of a good dead-bolt and a cheap screwdriver kept the potential perp from getting in. The landlord fixed the door frame and at my suggestion he also installed some thick metal 'pry guards', in case someone tries to get in again. We've also taken several other 'security measures' I won't go in to here. We beleive the crook was trying to gain entrance to steal an expensive bicycle one of the other tennants had left in the lobby overnight that evening. Now, he makes sure he either carries it upstairs to his apartment of parks it out of sight behind the stairs! > A couple of days later, when I went out to mail a letter, I spotted the other half of the screwdriver laying in the gutter about two blocks from my house<  |  IP: Logged

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