And he tried to go around the checkpoint, not through it. A distinction that probably doesn’t mean much. That gives me the suspicion that the trooper stepped in front of the truck. I wasn’t there, so I’m only guessing.

My feelings are: If you wish to stay with your property as disaster ensues then you should be free to do so. You may have someone in the attic that you are protecting. You may have to forego later rescue due to your decision.

However, once having left, the State does have a compelling interest in preventing you from returning because if you die on a public street on the way to your private property then your rotting corpse may contribute to polluting other people’s private and public property.

There, you now have a balanced state and personal view to satisfy libertarians.

About the cop and the pickup driver. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The driver was wrong to try to drive through a cop with a gun. The cop was wrong to place himself in the path of the vehicle. The cop was not threatened with lethal force until he did step in front of the truck.

A stupid analogy: you walk past a cop who is not in your path. The cop says “Stop, by state law I say you cannot proceed without showing government ID.” You, knowing the Supreme Court opinions about demands for ID, and feeling that you have no reason not to proceed about your lawful business, continue walking. The cop steps in front of you and you step on his foot. Have you just “assaulted an officer”? Do NBA rules apply or municipal rules giving police commands unlimited authority?

We live in a police state when it is illegal to ignore a cop no matter the situation.
The example I will give is the Jerseyville, IL teenage who died after multiple taser usages. His crime: Ignoring a cop’s order to stop proselytizing in the street.

At least some of us are getting old enough that years of rock music, unmuffled trucks, noisy computer rooms, not to mention shotguns and revolvers can plead hearing impairment. If we survive the initial shock treatments.

But I agree the amount of force the police used was excessive

I doubt that is ever the case. I’d be willing to bet the number of people who enter a disaster area to take care of their own stuff is minimal and any problems associated with their reentry is statistical noise. In fact, looters don’t worry too much about it since they’re guaranteed no one else will be there.

I simply do not believe it requires the use of lethal force to prevent people from doing something that might be dangerous.

One asshole doing something stupid plus another asshole doing something stupid inevitably leads to a situation where you’d just like to dump both assholes in the middle of the Pacific and forget about them

And applies to this situation just fine.

To be clear, if it turns out he tried to skirt the checkpoint, and the cop stepped in front of the vehicle and drew his pistol, then the cop was using excessive force. But various reports say the guy ran into the cop with his vehicle. Even if he didn’t do it at high speed, the cop doesn’t know that he won’t.

The distinction between this and what one of us would encounter, is we don’t have an affirmative duty to enforce the blockade, and to take law breakers into custody. In the case of someone threatening with a vehicle, we can merely step out of the way. If the officers were intent on taking the driver into custody, they had to arrest the vehicle to get to the driver, and most state laws allow for peace officers to exercise reasonable force in making arrests. One could argue this wasn’t reasonable, but if the circumstances were as described, I doubt you’d get a jury to agree.

That’s what I would have done. Keep trying different ways to get in by car, and if that doesn’t work, sneak in on foot.

If it turns out that this man intentionally tried to run the cop over, then fine, the response was correct. But let’s be honest: no one intends to hit a pedestrian with a truck three times and doesn’t succeed in running them over completely.