If they bust the kingpin on the street or he/his buddies at the local bar, they won't get to keep all the ill-gotten goodies at the crime scene for themselves
Seeing as there's more SWAT operations, doing more routine high-intensity ingress operations, against a stronger-than-ever drug industry, I don't see how it possibly could be. Proportion aside, it's quite obvious it is going to get worse before it gets better. And unlike mass shootings, no knock raids are something we can actually control.
Both sides will have sought cover after a few seconds, so it is still possible for the non-LEO to give himself up. If the police insist on taking then-illegal action in retribution for their screw-up, well, that's what survivors' lawsuits are for.
A change in tactics sure would. There's a reason we don't have high speed pursuits as a matter of course anymore, nor full-speed blow throughs of intersections except in absolute emergencies. I keep hearing the canard of "officer safety" thrown up as the justification for these raids, but I don't see how sending a squad of guys in battle dress on an offensive operation to single-handedly escalate the situation to the level of lethal force could
possibly be done in the name of officer safety. Not when there is sufficient time to get a warrant (i.e. time to find a less insane means of executing the search). A no-knock is pretty much
the most dangerous thing an officer can knowingly go into, so wouldn't the preference be to
avoid them if at all possible?
The real justification has always been prevention of evidence destruction, because it's a lot easier to prosecute someone with a bag of pot in-hand for the jury. There's no question the element of surprise makes the investigator's job far easier, but that can also be said for pretty much every other questionable/illegal police tactic that's been discarded as immoral. We've even seen examples of raids on meth-labs timed to coincide with the big sale so those dollars can be seized; never mind the fact that it's also when volatile chemicals tend to be present in the process. If they are worried about 'drugs being flushed' as the refrain goes, shut off water to the building before the raid --duh. If the amount is small enough to be flushed, is it really worth a lethal-force situation in the first place?
As violent and risky to both officers and inhabitants as a no-knock is, I've never understood how there is not a "necessary to reduce likely risk to life and limb" type requirement for them, which would place some burden on the officers to show the tactic was
necessary for risk aversion if things go badly. It would relegate them to emergency-type serious situations where dangers like condition zero automatic weapons, teargas, and concussion grenades would actually be justified. If police are worried of being shot through the door when they announce (reasonable), I don't see why they could not do a remote-knock while entering elsewhere.
I just don't understand how someone --gangbanger, saint, or average Joe-- can be expected to
not react to defend his life when storm ninjas burst into his room unannounced. Does it really even matter if they are cops, terrorists, gang members, or thieves? Beyond some point of violent urgency it's not even a legal issue, and more a human rights dilemma (reflexively acting to defend your life when ambushed; if you can't legislate morality, I doubt you can legislate survival instinct). The enemy is whoever is going to get you killed, after all.
There is no cause, whatsoever, for there to be one shred of lawsuit immunity for departments in cases of mistaken addresses. We used to have these things called 'investigators' who'd do 'stake outs' and 'due diligence' to make sure they nabbed the right guys. After all, what happens to the precious flushable evidence if the criminal next door hears SWAT crashing through with flashbangs? A group so incompetent as to raid 6G instead of 6F
deserves to have a large chunk of its operating resources taken away in lawsuit, and be severely chastised by the city council when they go begging to have it replenished.
TCB
