Police organizations and state officials are urgently trying to clarify information about a controversial law that some say could have a serious impact on the safety of local law enforcement officers.
Several reports, mostly on the Internet are just emerging about Senate Bill 1, which was passed by the Indiana Legislature earlier this year and signed into law by Gov. Mitch Daniels in March.
Some reports incorrectly imply that the law gives citizens the right to use deadly force against police officers simply if they enter a home without permission.
Not true, says state Sen. Michael Young, a Republican from Indianapolis who presented Senate Bill 1. An officer, he noted, must act illegally for force to be used.
“The bill reasserts our rights as citizens to protect our property and ourselves from any person, including from the government, who commits unlawful entry and is a threat,” Young said. “Also, only reasonable force can be used to quell such unlawful entry.”
The senator added that the intent of his legislation is to “balance the protection of police officers who risk their lives for us everyday with the rights of citizens who have to protect themselves in their house whey they don’t know who may be entering their home.”
Law enforcement officials, however, are concerned that Senate Bill 1 can place officers in more danger.
For example, can an officer, they ask, be shot and killed for accidentally entering the wrong home in pursuit of a suspect, or stopping an individual’s car for a traffic stop if they have reasonable suspicion?
“We didn’t want this legislation to be enacted,” said Bill Owensby, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 86, which represents Indianapolis officers.
Owensby added that the language of Senate Bill 1 doesn’t say citizens have the right to shoot police officers, but because it has been described by some as the “right to resist” bill, it gives the false impression that citizens can resist law enforcement.
“It does only if the officer is acting illegally,” said Owensby. “The problem is that citizens are left up to their own imagination about what is legal and what is not legal. This is going to force law enforcement to take serious action to defend themselves if a citizen who hasn’t really read the law takes a deadly action.”
Senate Bill 1 is actually an amendment to Indiana’s so-called Castle Doctrine law, which allows deadly force to be used to stop illegal entry into a home or car. The term “public servant” was simply added to the law by the amendment.
Most states have some form of a Castle Doctrine law. Indiana’s version was last updated in 2006. Some believe citizens rights groups and gun rights groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) began pushing for another revision of the Castle Doctrine law. However, Young said the change was prompted by last year’s ruling in the Indiana Supreme Court’s Barnes vs. State case.
That ruling, some say, effectively indicated that citizens do not have the right to resist a police officer’s illegal entry into their home or defend themselves.
Young said the ruling left citizens vulnerable to incidents such as drug induced date rapes committed by an Evansville officer, domestic abuse by an off-duty officer in Greenwood or the 1999 shooting of an unarmed man at his home in Indianapolis by police who then took his money and drugs.
“Can you imagine, in the inner city, if the government can walk into your house anytime, you can’t defend yourself and all you can do is go to court?” Young said. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
Kendale Adams, a spokesman for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD), said a bulletin was sent to its officers about the Senate act.
“We are encouraging our officers to make sure they clearly state what authority they have as police officers and why they are taking certain law enforcement actions,” Adams said.
Young said the law specifically explains circumstances in which citizens cannot use force, and that it should be used only as a last resort when there is no other alternative.
For example, force cannot be used if a person provokes action by law enforcement, if they are committing a crime, if an officer receives an invitation from any resident of a home, if police are in pursuit and if a searching officer has a warrant.
Citizens are advised to understand what Senate Bill 1 actually says.
“You really have to read this law,” Adams said. “You can’t just go by what somebody said. This law is detailed about what a citizen can or cannot do.”
In its own words
A paragraph from Senate Bill 1
“A person is justified in using reasonable force against any law enforcement officer if the person reasonably believes the force is necessary to: protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force; prevent or terminate the law enforcement officer’s unlawful entry of or attack on the person’s dwelling, curtilage, or occupied motor vehicle; or prevent or terminate the law enforcement officer’s trespass on or criminal interference of property lawfully in the person’s possession.”
