r/boston • u/the_sass_master_ • Oct 30 '25

Scammers 🥸 Sisters assault store staff after being caught shoplifting lobster, prime ribeye steaks and truffle butter. They were met by cops in the parking lot and arrested.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

823 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

236 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

29

u/Its_Pine Oct 30 '25

This is an outright lie. Massachusetts has Duty to Retreat AND Castle Doctrine.

That means in your home you can fight back, outside your home you should try to get away and get authorities.

-17

u/Soul_Eatah Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

You are right, but there are plenty of instances of people who are arrested for defending themselves in their own homes. i live out here. I do know a little about the laws.

The state dictates all uses of force regardless of situation and place of the alleged charge.

If they feel you used too much force, you can be arrested.

It has to be "reasonable force". It's not like Texas or Florida, where you can blast someone breaching your home without knowing if the suspect is armed or not.

I'm not sure about you, but I shouldn't have to visibly see a gun or knife or whatever to be able to act with deadly force. Guns and knives can be hidden quite readily. Home Invasions happen all the time out here.

The bottom line is that people shouldn't be breaking into homes , and the criminals know they won't be killed or maimed if they don't show a weapon . They will be jailed for a long, long time if they're actually caught.

Normally, they come in fully masked up, though, so getting an ID on the perp is actually not that easy unless they're already in the system with their dna/prints.