Environment Not Safe for Police to Enter A follow-up to Can I booby-trap my property against police?, Let us suppose I have some property that I didn't booby trap, but is natural dangerous (say, old mine), and I decided that inside the dangerous areas would be a good place to hide things that I don't want found. But I never bothered to secure the area to make any reasonably safe entrance. I just think that I'm light enough to walk across rotted boards over deep pits. And, dutiful citizen that I am I keep the entrance locked up, with a warning sign just beyond that reads "Hazardous Environment, Do not Enter". I have done nothing to further the danger, but also nothing to remove it. Have I done enough, or am I liable for the consequences of the police forcing their way through and encountering the danger? Hypothetical question only, I have no such land.
In Connecticut, this is covered by the firefighter's rule. Police and fire personnel entering a property as part of their official duties are considered licensees, which limits the duties of the landowner. The rules are as follows: You can't intentionally hurt or lay a trap for the licensee. If you know or should know the licensee is there, you need to exercise due care with them. You don't have to worry about obvious hazards (but keep in mind that it's harder to see stuff at night). If you're doing something dangerous, you need to watch out for them. If you know about a hidden hazard, you must warn them. I'm not sure how in-depth you need to go with the warnings; various things I find suggest the duty to warn might only be there when you know or should know the licensee is present, but signs are a good idea regardless. On the other hand, if you do need to warn them, you might need to mention the specific locations of the pits you actually know about. However, there's no duty at all to proactively look for possible hazards. This rule originated as a rule for professional firefighters responding to a negligently-started fire: the idea is that professional firefighters sign up to do a dangerous job, and letting them sue for hazards inherent in their job (they aren't called without a fire) is a bad idea. Also, since they cannot be denied entry, go in places not open to the public, and can arrive at any hour, needing to keep the property safe for them is an unreasonable burden. Of course, there's an exception if a law is passed to protect their safety, because statutes override common law. The rule has since been extended in some states to police, and to situations besides the very problem they were called for. Other states have abolished it. In any event, this is for civil liability only: this is when cops can sue for injuries caused to them.
You can trim bushes at your property line, as you have done. There is little hope for forcing a neighbor to cut more radically on their side. It is possible that a fire ordinance could be an issue, so it the bushes are a credible fire-related threat to property, the fire department might intervene (your belief that the bushes pose a threat is countered by their presumed belief that there is no threat). There may be local plant-height ordinance, but perhaps bushes are restricted by local regulations, so check whether they are in violation there (a rather remote possibility). Finally, there could be view-protecting ordinances or CCRs, but again those are rare.
Your landlord has an obligation to allow "quiet enjoyment" of the premises. Essentially this means that, unless they are damaging his or her property, the tenants are entited to act as though it were their own property. Many people take drugs at home. Between the tenants and the landlord this is not something the landlord is allowed to get involved in. If you believe there is criminal activity going on, you can but are not obliged to report it to the police.
This is a no win situation. People who try to stop in a safe public place fearing that the cop may be an imposter risk prosecution for resisting arrest. But, no one will offer you any remedy if the cop was an imposter who was victimizing you. One recommended course of action if you doubt a cop is real is to call 911 as you pull over to confirm that the cop trying to pull you over is real.
In most US States (probably all of them) failure to follow the Lawful orders of a police officer is itself a crime, and is grounds for the officer to arrest the person, even if the person had not done anything wrong prior to that. This obviously leads to the question: what orders are lawful? The officer has a pretty broad range of discretion. Ordering a person out of a car, or to roll down a car window, is pretty clearly lawful. Ordering a person to commit a crime would not be lawful. Neither would ordering a person to submit while the officer rapes or robs the individual be lawful. In practice, the officer will usually think that all of his or her commands are lawful, and might feel threatened by any failure to comply. In which case, the officer might shoot. This might not be upheld later if the command was not lawful and/or the officer's fear was not reasonable, but that will do the person shot little good. It is usually wise to comply with any commend, unless it puts you very directly at serious risk. Remember you don't know what else has happed to the officer that day. Has the officer had a fight with his/her spouse that morning? Just been denied a promotion? Been turned down for a mortgage? None of that should matter, legally, but it will affect the officer's attitude, and can lead to escalation, even if the person stopped is in no way at fault. An instruction to "shut up" is probably not going to provoke an officer to shoot if it is disobeyed, but it might help to escalate the situation. It is probably lawful, depending non the exact circumstances. As to the first amendment issues, that would probably come under the 'time, place, or manner" regulations that may be applied to speech. And even if it is not held to be lawful, the time to contest it is in court, not during the stop. If the officer feels safer with the window fully rolled down so that the officer could reach in, that is probably a lawful command.
The General Rule In practice, the only time when self-defense against a police officer is legal is when you do not know and have no reasonable way that you could have known that the person attacking you is a police officer. (And arguably, a police officer acting in an official capacity in furtherance of his or her duties, rather than in a personal capacity as an individual.) For example, if the police do a no knock raid in the dark of night, and don't announce themselves, and you shoot police officers reasonably believing them to be home invasion burglars, you would not have criminal or civil liability for doing so. A similar valid self-defense claim might arise when someone has an objectively reasonable reason to think that someone claiming to be a police officer is really just a criminal impersonating a police officer, even if that belief is, in fact, mistaken. In almost all other circumstances, you need to submit to the officers, and you are pretty much required by law to bear the risk that excessive force by the officer will harm you. If you don't, you will probably be guilty of the crime of resisting arrest and will not be entitled to a self-defense defense. The fact that you are not actually guilty of a crime is irrelevant. This is often the case and police officers are not omniscient. If the officer lacked probable cause for an arrest (which there is often no way that the person being arrested or attacked can know at the time), the remedy is a civil rights suit after the fact, not self-defense. In theory, there might be other isolated circumstances where self-defense against a police officer is legal, but they involve fact patterns so quirky that they would almost never happen in real life, or would almost never be possible to prove in a manner that the courts would believe. Officer Liability For Harming Someone Legitimately Acting In Self Defense Whether the officers had civil liability to you if you were harmed by the officers while exercising your right to self-defense would depend upon their state of mind, even if you were rightfully using self-defense. For example, a U.S. Supreme Court case decided in January of 2017 (White v. Pauly) involved this fact pattern. In White v. Pauly an officer arrived late on the scene and had no reason to believe that the officers who arrived there before him and were being shot at by citizens in a house that they were approaching, lacked probable cause, or had not announced themselves. The court held that as a result, he had no civil liability to a citizen he shot, even if the person who the late arriving officer shot while that citizen was shooting back at the police officers on the scene was actually engaging in good faith self-defense. The citizen's self-defense in the case had a valid defense to criminal or civil liability for firing on the officers, because the citizen shooting back didn't actually know that the people approaching his house were police officers. But, because the late arriving officer reasonably believed under the circumstances that the citizen had no right to engage in self-defense, because he thought that the early arriving officers had probable cause and had announced themselves, the late arriving officer had no civil liability to the citizens he shot.
Generally, no Police cannot enter private property subject to a number of exemptions: they have a search warrant, or when in close pursuit of someone the police believe has committed, or attempted to commit, a serious crime, or to sort out a disturbance, or if they hear cries for help or of distress, or to enforce an arrest warrant, or if invited in freely by the occupant, or under various statutes which give the police powers of entry (not necessarily by force) into a number of different kinds of premises.
It's called police and prosecutorial discretion to discern when to arrest and prosecute; and that situation in particular is also the result of a decision of the jury of the court of public opinion. Permits are required to sell on the street in Oakland. But not everyone who sells has a permit, and not everyone who is confronted about not having a permit is arrested and prosecuted. There are simply too many potential cases to prosecute. And, the police officer has the discretion to ticket or not. When you get pulled over while driving or riding a bike, you don't always get a ticket, since the officer has the option of discretion. When the officer responded and found an eight year-old selling water, he obviously was aware of the fact that it was a violation. But he was also aware of the court of public opinion. What is it going to look like if he arrests an eight year old and their parent? Allison Ettel was right, in a purely legal sense, to make the report. And technically, the child (and adult) needed a permit. And could have been ticketed and prosecuted. But it was Ettel was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, and she lost her case. Happens a lot.