[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by dammage79

From what I was told from Police here, hate speech isn't actually against the law?

Its protected under the freedom of expression in the charter of rights and freedoms or some such bologna.

To be clear, hate speech is protected under the charter of rights and freedoms. It can nonetheless be against the law if it contravenes s.319. Hate speech in private conversation is not against the law, but in public, if it ticks all the boxes, it is a criminal offense.

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

There's a dispute between the officers and the boyfriend how they entered. The cops say they knocked, announced who they were and then busted the door open. The boyfriend said they just banged on the door, no announcing and busted the door open.

This has been bugging me - isn't the name of this measure a "no-knock warrant"? If so, why did they knock at all?

He was a licensed gun owner and if some people busted into your place at night and you didn't know who they were you'd probably shoot first too, in America anyways.

Totally understandable for him to react the way he did. Also totally understandable for the police, seeing one of them get shot in the leg, to shoot back - albeit not reasonable to just spray bullets everywhere like they did.

My questions are who signed off on that warrant, was it that necessary? They knew where he was, why not wait until daylight and wait for him to come out or execute the warrant properly then?

I think you're mixing up Walker, who was in the apartment with Taylor, and her ex boyfriend Glover.

What happened, as I understand it, was that the Police were attempting to apprehend Glover. They believed he was at location X, thought that was the most likely place, but they weren't sure - he could also have been at location Y. Location Y was Taylor's apartment. Glover was, in fact, at location X. Only Taylor and Walker were at her apartment.

The Police executed two no-knock warrants simultaneously - one at location X and one at Taylor's apartment. The reason for this is that if you go to location X first, and he's not there, someone might call him at Taylor's apartment and go, "hey, the cops raided your place, you should make yourself scarce." That is the rationale. The rationale for barging in without warning is similar - you don't give the suspect time to run.

Those rationales make sense, they are clearly aimed at achieving a valid law enforcement goal: catching suspects without giving them time to flee. The potential risk created by doing things this way is one of the main things that is objectionable about this case.

She died for no reason, and people are arguing it's somehow her fault for being mixed with her boyfriend, or his fault he shot first. I really don't think it's that cut and dry at all.

She didn't die for no reason. She died because the guy next to her shot a police officer and she got hit with the return fire. But no one, as far as I can tell, is saying it's in any way her fault. It's clearly not. I don't even think it's Walker's fault for shooting the officer, because as you note, his reaction is totally understandable. But all of that doesn't suggest that the police officers in Taylor's home were wrong to shoot at a guy who shot at them first.

There are a lot of things that went wrong here, from the process of obtaining the warrant, to the policy of no-knock warrants in general, to the broader problems with gun culture in the United States. But charging the police who shot her for any of those things doesn't make any sense.