Reply to DC residents, were you ever personally a victim of a crime here

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Break in of my English basement earlier this year in Shaw by one of the tent city dwellers . I went into to survival mode and hit the perp with a baseball bat and one of the times I got him in the face that sent him unconscious he fractured multiple bones in his face. The police charged me, the victim, with a felony and it wasn’t until I hired a lawyer that the prosecutors dropped the charges.[/quote]

I'd like to know more about this. I have a hard time believing the city charged you for something like that.[/quote]

Yeah, $10 says the "tent city dweller" wandered in through a door PP left open and PP whacked him in the face with a bat with no warning.

Obviously nobody should be entering homes that aren't theirs, but unless PP was attacked themselves without provocation, attacking them with a deadly weapon was not warranted.  Make a nonviolent effort to get them out of your house, call the police, and let them handle it. Want to play vigilante, better be ready to accept the felony consequences.[/quote]

DP. I'm not going to wait around to see if the person breaking into my home is going to attack me or my family first. I'm also going to assume that they have a weapon and I'm going to protect myself and my family accordingly. If you want to try to reason with the person to voluntarily leave your house, best of luck. Besides, you are legally within your rights to act in self-defense under such circumstances. PP's experience simply highlights how incompetent law enforcement is in this city. [/quote]

You're free to do anything you want to defend yourself, but you will reap the consequences if you overstep your legal bounds.

And no, you are not necessarily legally within your rights to act in self defense under such circumstances. We have very little info about PP's circumstances, but the actual law in DC is:

[quote]You are entitled to claim self-defense:

(1) if you actually believe you are in imminent danger of bodily harm; and

(2) if you have reasonable grounds for that belief.

You may use the amount of force which, at the time of the incident, you actually and reasonably believe is necessary to protect yourself (or a third person) from imminent bodily harm.  This may extend to the use of deadly force if you actually and reasonably believe you are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm from which you can save yourself only by using deadly force against your assailant.

Even if the other person is the aggressor and you are justified in using force in self defense, you may not use any greater force than you actually and reasonably believe is necessary under the circumstances to prevent the harm you reasonably believe is intended or to save your life or avoid serious bodily harm.[/quote]

Someone simply entering your home without your permission does NOT entitle you to self defense under DC law.[/quote]

Perhaps. Perhaps not. But when the same person fails to retreat at the sight of an scared resident with a baseball bat, it certainly is reasonable to infer that the intruder was not merely coming in to remind someone that they left the door unlocked. [/quote]

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