Can you make the police department pay for damage done to your property if you get swatted? For purposes of conjecture, say some nameless online troll decides that they hate you. Perhaps you said you don't worship the members of a K-Pop band they like. As a result, they do some research and find your address. They then proceed to call your local police department, reporting a (fictional) hostage situation / homicide in progress / etc. at your address. The police department's SWAT team busts down your door and trashes your house. This is a &quot;prank&quot; called swatting. As is the troll's intention, it causes a lot of damage to your property, damage you can't afford to get repaired. Is there any way to get the police department to pay for the damage? After all, they did just come and trash your house despite you having done nothing wrong (besides the horrendous crime of not worshiping the troll's favorite band).
There is a police power exception to the 5th and 14th Amendment rights to not taking property without due process of law and just compensation. In a similar case arising in Greenwood Village, Colorado, an innocent homeowner was denied any relief at trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, or on appeal to the 10th Circuit, after his house was trashed by SWAT teams trying to catch a guy accused of mere theft and fleeing police officers. (The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case sometime after the linked article was written.) But, there does appear to be a circuit split on the issue. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a case appealed from a U.S. District Court decision in Texas reached a contrary conclusion in a case between Vicki Baker and the City of McKinney, Texas decided earlier this month in March of 2023 in which it affirmed a U.S. District Court ruling in favor of the homewoner. The fact that there is now a circuit split on the issue increases the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court would consider a Petition for Certiorari from the 5th Circuit decision in the Texas case, although it is far from a sure thing as only about 1% of Petitions for Certiorari presented to the U.S. Supreme Court (about 80 out of 7,000 to 8,000 per year) are granted. The key issue distinguishing these two rulings is the question of whether the police power exception to the eminent domain obligation of a government applies to cases in which the person whose property is taken is innocent of any wrongdoing and any legally relevant connection to a wrongdoer. Both circuits would agree that a government does not have eminent domain liability under the constitution if, for example, the property destroyed belongs to someone who committed a crime and has their house destroyed in the process of trying to arrest the criminal. Also, neither of the decisions disputes that police may, under the police power exception, destroy property in connection with efforts to apprehend a criminal or to prevent a crime, without seeking court approval in the usual situation where there are exigent circumstances that can't wait for the slow process of conducting a court hearing on the question. The question, instead, is whether an innocent property owner has a right to bring an &quot;inverse condemnation&quot; lawsuit to remedy the damage that the innocent property owner has experienced.
You are allowed to ask the police whatever questions you like. There is an upper limit that you can't refuse to obey a lawful order on the premise that you want to ask a bunch of questions, but they don't seem to have ordered you to do anything, so you can ask away. They have no obligation to tell you anything or to be truthful, except for certain questions like "am I free to go" when you want to leave and are testing whether you are under arrest. Even then they don't have to answer your questions right away. The police can therefore ignore you, especially if you are asking curiosity questions. It might be that they are restricted from giving information in certain circumstances (pertaining to the privacy of others). If there is an issue of legitimate concern (e.g. Little Billy has been beating up on cats again) and you feel that you need to know this, then you can request the police record on the matter. Certain information will probably be redacted under state law, but you could get a report that states that some [redacted] juvenile was beating up on animals. The Florida records law is one of the first in he nation, dating back to 1909. You can read this, to see if you think the circumstances match one of the exemptions, though all you have to do is make the request and be told that the record is exempt, then you will have some idea what was going on.
The part about "If I'm the owner of the content, surely I have the right to request its deletion" is the problem. Sure, you have the right to request, but you can't legally compel. You have an agreement with them, according to which you got something, and they got something. You can't then take back the thing that you gave them, which is permission to use. You didn't give them the IP itself, which you still hold. Here's an analogy. You may own a car, and can give a person permission to use the car (let's say "if you bring me back a pound of cheese from the store"). You cannot later change your mind (especially after you've gotten the cheese) a say that you retract that permission and therefore they actually stole your car. When permission to use is given, as long as the conditions for granting permission are satisfied, you can't un-give permission.
If I were a DA (District Attorney) looking out "stamp out" statutory rape, I would make the rounds of the hospitals, identify women who gave birth, or were impregnated when underaged, and go from there. But few, if any DAs, do this. No, you wouldn't. First, you have neither the time nor the budget to do this. Second hospitals are not public property, you would need a warrant which the court won't give you because you don't have probable cause to believe a crime has or is being committed. As a DA, I would of course, follow up on any complaints lodged by the victim, or even by her/his parents. And maybe I would prosecute a case where people were "caught in the act, or there were nude pictures, etc. May even an especially egregious PDA (public display of affection). No, you wouldn't. You would follow up on complaints to the extent that you have the time, budget and manpower to do so and you would prosecute cases where you believe that you have a reasonable prospect of getting a conviction and where prosecution is, in your opinion, in the public interest. In the real world, that means where the police hand you a brief of evidence that is a lay-down misere and (for statutory rape) where there is a real power imbalance between the perpetrator and the victim - giving 2 willing 15 year old kids the label of 'sex offender' for life is probably not in the public interest. But suppose there were no complaints or smoking guns. Could someone investigate based on something like a teenager "holding hands" with someone much older? To make the question objective, what has historically caused DAs to prosecute people outside of the above parameters? With some exceptions, it is not the role of the DA to initiate or conduct investigations of criminal actions - that is the role of law enforcement officers, usually for this particular crime, police officers. Notwithstanding, the general rule in western, liberal democracies (which the United States, with a certain generosity of spirit, can still be considered) is that citizens are allowed to get on with their lives without day-to-day interference from the state. That is, law enforcement officers do not 'go fishing' for crimes, they investigate crimes that they have a probable cause to believe have actually happened, either because they themselves saw it happen or someone has reported it to them as having happened. The term for having a law enforcement officer following you around waiting for you to break the law is 'harassment' and may itself be illegal. A law enforcement officer can initiate an investigation based on anything but as no law enforcement agency has unlimited resources, they tend to follow only those investigations that might lead somewhere. For example, it has been known for parents to hold the hands of their children and even to publicly display affection towards them and parents are often "much older" then their children - this would not generally be grounds for initiating a statutory rape investigation.
There are some problems with this kind of vandalism, one of them clearly that the internet is international and vandalism can be performed from everywhere on servers everywhere in the world. And so it may be (both technically and legally) difficult to get hold of the vandal. Therefore, most wikis primarily focus on blocking offending accounts or their IPs and hope that this helps at least for a while. Only if it doesn't and the vandalism continues for extended time periods, legal measures are considered. Legally speaking though, vandalism is prohibited by many jurisdictions and of course by the terms of use of the wiki operators. For instance, the Swiss criminal code Art 147 explicitly puts &quot;abusing of data processing equipment&quot; under penalty and hence gives website operators a legal backup for setting up rules for the use of their services. Computer fraud Art. 147 1 Any person who with a view to his own or another's unlawful gain, by the incorrect, incomplete or unauthorised use of data, or in a similar way, influences the electronic or similar processing or transmission of data and as a result causes the transfer of financial assets, thus occasioning loss to another, or immediately thereafter conceals such a transfer shall be liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding five years or to a monetary penalty. 2 If the offender acts for commercial gain, he shall be liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding ten years or to a monetary penalty of not less than 90 daily penalty units. Technically, the law even requires prosecution ex officio, even though without a hint from the operator, the police won't start an investigation. I'm sure the US has a similar law. The problem is, as with all internet crimes, it's practical application, particularly because often website operator and offender are not living in the same country. Edit After reading the exact text again (it was unavailable yesterday) Art 147 is mostly about fraud performed by computers (classical &quot;hacking&quot;) but it shouldn't be difficult to argue that fighting and reverting vandalism requires significant (technical and personal) effort and hence the operator looses money. Additionally, there's Art 144bis which matches even better for the scenario here: Damage to data Art. 144bis Any person who without authority alters, deletes or renders unusable data that is stored or transmitted electronically or in some other similar way shall be liable on complaint to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty. If the offender has caused major damage, a custodial sentence of from one to five years may be imposed. The offence is prosecuted ex officio. Any person who manufactures, imports, markets, advertises, offers or otherwise makes accessible programs that he knows or must assume will be used for the purposes described in paragraph 1 above, or provides instructions on the manufacture of such programs shall be liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty. If the offender acts for commercial gain, a custodial sentence of from one to five years may be imposed.
That is not a valid assumption. Many states have laws that let you presume someone is a threat to your life if they forcibly enter your house. Simple trespass on your land does not let you reasonably presume someone is a murderer. An autonomous killer drone is not a comparison you want to make: those may be illegal entirely, and are likely to seriously hurt any claim of justifiable force. “You forfeit your right to live when you set foot on my property” is not justifiable. If the dogs are trained to be a hazard to the community, that’s an argument in favor of having them confiscated and destroyed. Dogs are not people. Under normal circumstances, they cannot be protected under self-defense or the defense of others. Those doctrines only apply when a person is in danger. Deadly force is sometimes allowed to protect property, but this tends to be strictly limited. To start with, you can only ever use force to prevent illegal damage to property. If your concern is “this animal control officer will destroy my dogs within the scope of their duty,” that’s not protecting against an illegal use of force. Deadly force in defense of property is also normally limited to particular crimes that are inherently dangerous, like arson, robbery, or burglary. Even in Texas, simple theft only justifies deadly force during the nighttime. Deadly force is also not justifiable if there were reasonable other options. Shooting an animal control officer is unlikely to be the only way to temporarily stop them from destroying a dog. Threatening violence in order to influence a judge’s decision is terrorism. This hypothetical man is a terrorist. He may well find himself on death row for murder, but he’s also going to face separate charges for terrorism.
The police are never permitted to break the law. However, the law that gives them their powers may make other laws not applicable to them in the course of their duties. If a law is not applicable to them; how can they break it?
There is no crime of "police misconduct" in the US, but murder or theft are certainly crimes which would qualify as "police misconduct". To take a real case, an officer in Georgia was convicted of aggravated assault, violating oath of office, and making a false statement (not murder, though he did kill the victim). In principle, he would also be liable in a lawsuit by the victim's family. However, these would be separate legal processes, the criminal prosecution being conducted by and at the discretion of the government prosecutor, and the monetary lawsuit being conducted by and at the discretion of the victim's family (on behalf of the victim). It is possible that an officer will be convicted yet not found civilly liable, or vice versa; or both, or neither. The victim (or family) doesn't necessarily have any connection to the criminal case, although they typically can testify during the sentencing phase. In some jurisdictions (e.g. California), the victim has a right to testify at a sentencing hearing. The result of a lawsuit can never be imprisonment – that has to come from criminal prosecution, and criminal prosecution does not result in a monetary reward to the victim (any criminal fine goes to the government).