I watched a recent CNN report on the shooting of a 7-year old girl in Detroit. Police were attempting to serve a no-knock warrant on a possible murder suspect. According to the family's lawyer, police threw a flashbang grenade into the window and that's when things go pear shaped.
Regardless of who's side you believe, two things stand out after I watched the video. 1) The police were at the wrong door. 2) The grandmother fired a shot according to police.
A loud bang in the middle of the night and a storm of people in through your front door. What would you do? Shoot? Be a victim?
The police, protected by their position of authority, and the power of that warrant, are free to stormtroop over the very citizens whom they are sworn to protect. Blinded by the drive to catch the bad guy, they make mistakes. Critical errors in judgement, reasoning, and possibly even protocol have resulted in the death of an innocent girl and has terrorized her family.
The power behind a no-knock warrant rests on the premise that law enforcement needs the ability to gain access to locations during a raid without knocking ("no-knock") or announcing themselves. This is to prevent any perpetrators from destroying evidence.
In a report by the Christian Science Monitor, Peter Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University, found that:
The report is dated November 29, 2006 and written by Patrik Jonsson.The number of no-knock raids has increased from 3,000 in 1981 to more than 50,000 last year.
Now, if you try and wade through all the legal mumbo jumbo surrounding the concept of no-knock warrants, you'll likely get lost. Without a legal education (or, at the least, an understanding of legal research), the waters are muddy. Thick, soupy mud.
I was reading over a Cato Institute by Radley Balko in which he writes,
He goes on to say,over the course of researching a paper for the Cato Institute on the subject, I've found close to 200 such cases over the last 15 years. And those are just the cases that have been reported.
The court was spot on to suggest that both the citizen and the police need the protection that a proper "knock" warrant affords. Police don't shoot (and possibly kill) an innocent, law-abiding citizen. That same innocent, law-abiding citizen doesn't shoot (and possibly kill) a police officer who is trying to do his/her job. However, Wilson does not eliminate the no-knock warrant (or deem them unconstitutional). They base this upon the findings in Ker v. California wherein they sayIn the 1995 case Wilson v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court for the first time ruled that at least in principle, the Fourth Amendment requires police to knock and announce themselves before entering a private home. In doing so, the court acknowledged the centuries-old "Castle Doctrine" from English common law, which states that a man has the right to defend his home and his family from intruders. The announcement requirement gives an innocent suspect the opportunity to persuade the police that they've targeted the wrong residence before having his home invaded. It also protects police from being targeted by innocent homeowners who have mistaken them for criminal intruders and those same homeowners from the burden of determining if the armed intruders in their home are police or criminals.
The Cato article sayscommon law rules that compliance is not required if the officer's peril would have been increased or the arrest frustrated had he demanded entrance and stated his purpose.
(emphasis mine)In fact, in many places the announcement requirement is now treated more like an antiquated ritual than compliance with a suspect's constitutional rights. In 1999, for example, the assistant police chief of El Monte, Calif., explained his department's preferred procedure to the Los Angeles Times: "We do bang on the door and make an announcement—'It's the police'—but it kind of runs together. If you're sitting on the couch, it would be difficult to get to the door before they knock it down."
That comment came in a story about a mistaken raid in which Mario Paz, an innocent man, was shot dead by a raiding SWAT team when he mistook them for criminal intruders and reached for a gun to defend himself.
One glaring situation arises when a criminal poses as law enforcement and effects a no-knock "raid" to effect the commission of their crime. A Fox News story out of Los Angeles, CA reported that former LAPD officers
Former law enforcement or gang-bangers; it makes no difference. Good guys get worked over while the law and legal system stands idle and allows it.were convicted of charges including conspiracy to deprive people of their rights under color of law
We have to ask ourselves, "When will the insanity stop?" Now with further reach of government in the "war on terror", more of our liberties are threatened. I can only hope that law makers and our leaders will realize what they accomplish by dis-arming law-abiding citizens and allowing the law free reign over the constituency.
