http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-14968236
by Mark Roussell
I imagine the police would claim that the death of a man is prima facie evidence of a crime having been committed, i.e. they would perceive it as a reasonable cause to assume that murder had occurred. However, whether or not this is a genuinely reasonable or logical assumption surely depends on the circumstances as they appeared to the police at the time. It’s entirely possible the police are aware of critical circumstances that have not been reported that would make an assumption of murder appropriate. Or then again they may just be over-interpreting the law, going that extra politically correct mile, and arresting obviously innocent people who have clearly used “reasonable”, but
lethal, self defence. I wonder which it is.
In my view any defensive action on one’s own property must automatically be assumed to be “reasonable”, even if it results in the death of an intruder. There is no other rational, effective, realistic or ethical interpretation.
The fact that the arrested man has been released on bail seems to suggest that he is not considered by the police to be a risk to others, which in turns seem to me to suggest that he probably should not have been arrested at all. Arresting the probably traumatised victim of a crime is simply not the behaviour we should expect from our police.
As an aside, I’d like to say to anyone who supports the idea of ‘tough policing’ from the likes of Bill Bratton or similar that these supercops seem most unliikely from what I’ve heard to avoid problems such as these, where homeowners are arrested for defending themselves and their property. Indeed, I suspect they would be all the more eager to arrest the homeowners in situations like this as potential criminals! So called tough, no compromises, policing tends to imply even less discrection, even less common sense, even less reasonableness than is exhibited at present. Sure, they might be less politically corrct but they will
replace this with an even greater disinterest in genuine reasonableness(*). They are probably the last people that libertarians should support.
(*) I am willing to believe otherwise if any of these supercops are willing to go on the public record to make it clear that they will always presume in favour of the homeowner in cases like this.
