I'm not here to do your homework for you. Read up a little on case law. In any Fourth Amendment case, the justification offered is usually "officer safety" and the courts usually go along.
Really? Cite some. Any fourth amendment case? You are making claims you can't back up. "Officer safety" is not some magic term that permits any kind of conduct. And it is disingenuous of you to suggest that it is.
This despite the fact that, statistically, police work is not very dangerous at all (commercial fishing, mining and logging are the three most dangerous jobs in this country, IIRC.)
What does that have to do with anything? Has anyone here claimed police work was the most dangerous occupation in America? No.
However, this seems to be a raid that should not have happened at all.
Why not? The article doesn't mention anything about the warrant being faulty. Just because the contraband items weren't recovered doesn't mean the information wasn't good. The last warrant I did before I retired didn't recover all of the stolen property that was supposedly in the house. In fact only one item listed was still there by the time the warrant was applied for and served. And the only reason that item was still there was the suspect forgot to take it when she fled after she assumed she'd been discovered. Does that meant that the other items listed in the warrant were never there and we shouldn't have served it?
Police rifles, at least around here, are accurized para-military weapons, and a stolen one in the hands of a criminal might justify, in my view, a SWAT raid. My position is that such raids ought be used only in extraordinary circumstances, and not just to serve an ordinary warrant. Surprisingly little discussion has focussed on the probable facts of that particular raid and whether THOSE facts support a raid on scene.
Duke, you've just hit on the biggest reason these threads are usually closed as soon as a moderator sees them. It's seldom the actual facts that we know about an incident that are discussed. Everyone jumps in with their preconceived notions that every raid is no knock raid and every raid is an unjustified assault on an innocent person who some dirty snitch picked out of the phone book. If we let them run they go 150+ posts of meaningless off topic discussion. I suppose it makes some people feel better to get things off their chests, but it makes us, the firearms community or "Gun Culture" look like a bunch of anti government anarchists to the person who isn't in the gun culture who surfs in looking for information. So instead of maybe converting a fence sitter to our side, we inadvertently confirm that the stereotype the antis like to portray us as is probably true.
What tactics the police use is a serious subject worthy of serious discussion. Unfortunately it's too emotional an issue to discuss at THR. It's a complicated subject, one has to have a bit more then a layman's knowledge of both the law and the tactics, techniques and procedures that are used to have an intelligent discussion of the issue. Again, unfortunately the discussion is usually tainted with false statements from people who don't know any better that all it takes to get a search warrant is a police officer to ask for one, or that you just have to say the magic words of "officer safety" and you are automatically cleared to do a no knock entry. So we spend all of our time and effort trying to get past those issues and we never manage to get to the subject at hand.
I'd enjoy a conversation with Jeff about the relative costs of surveillance which he mentioned. Local PD here prefer surveillance, as I know only so well.
Depending on the exact circumstances you are going to pay a minimum of two officers to do nothing but watch the subject or the building the subject is in for as long as it takes for him or her to come out with the goods. If the item you are trying to recover is small, you have have to deploy additional officers to follow everyone who leaves the premises and try to develop probable cause to stop them, and get consent to search them or develop PC to search just to make sure the contraband didn't leave the place/person you are watching with the other person. If you have enough PC to get a warrant, why not just serve it, do the search, recover (or not) the contraband? Which is cheaper and more efficient, tying up resources you could better use elsewhere on a long surveillance or using several officers for an hour or so to serve a warrant?
Arrest warrants are somewhat different. I know of many incidences where arrest warrants were sat on until the person to be arrested was away from his home and family. It is often safer to do it that way. Of course if the person is wanted for violent crimes and there is a chance he will slip away while you are waiting to catch him alone and away from his home, then you often have to take him when you know where he is.
And your opinion? I do know that the reason for the original no knocks was to try to protect evidence. It is rarely the case now. What is the basis for your non response to my request for data?
It doesn't exist. No one keeps those statistics. I could compile data for the agencies I worked for, but that would hardly be representative of the whole country. I'd be more then happy to provide the data if it did in fact exist.
The biggest fear at the time for those of us that were FOR THEM, was that the agencies would misuse and abuse the “no knock warrant”. That appears to have in fact happened. Your serve.
In 22 years I can never remember a no knock warrant being served anywhere in Marion County Illinois. Talking to officers from all over the country in person at training sessions and online has led me to believe that no knock warrants are very rare. If most of the guys who's job it is to serve them say they rarely or like me, never have done it, I have to take that as pretty strong evidence that they must be a pretty rare occurrence. Again, there is not national clearing house for how many search warrants and if the are knock and announce or no knock issued by every court nationwide. I suppose that information is public record, but it would be an enormous job to to compile the data. Maybe someone could get a grant to study the issue?
Interesting, I didn’t. I wasn’t talking about this incident. I was talking collectively about all these sort of incidents that are happening, it seems to me more often than in the past, across the nation. THAT’S WHY WE NEED MORE DATA.
Is it, or does it seem to be because of the 24 hour news cycle we live in now? The first botched warrant service I ever heard about was in Collinsville, IL near where I grew up. It was 1971 or 72 IIRC and the DEA and local police raided an apartment that was not occupied by the people who were supposed to be there. I was in high school at the time. It was all over the news and I believe the innocent parties wrote a book about it. So I know that it's been happening at least since then.
IF THE POLICE ARE COMMITTING CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR, THEY NEED TO BE STOPPED. Do you disagree with this. If they are not, no worries.
I agree wholeheartedly and in most cases if the police are involved in criminal behavior they are caught, prosecuted and punished.
Are you suggesting that studying Law enforcement agencies for potential criminal behavior is WRONG? I am assuming nothing other than it might be happening, that’s it. Do you know for a fact, it is not?
I've got nothing against watching the watchers so to speak. I do have a problem with people throwing accusations of criminal behavior around where there is no evidence any exists based on the information available. There is no evidence in the news article that started this thread that there was any criminal misconduct or negligence by the police. Yet it's been inferred and suggested several times.
Try this on as just an idea, let’s get the nation wide data, then argue. How is that for refreshing. Then you will have some facts, and I will have some facts, and I bet with those facts more than likely we will not be arguing, but shaking hands and agreeing.
That would be great if the data existed.
Actually, Mr. White, I thought the underlying basis of this thread, based in part on some of the assumptions made from an admittedly poor excuse of reporting, was the justification for no-knock versus knock and announce warrant service, and the possible restriction of these tactics for a variety of reasons. Some arguably better and more factual than others. It is also about the premise that the ownership of a gun was somehow prejudicial to the issuance of that warrant. Yes, the article was about a warrant being served for a possible stolen police weapon, but the conversation was about the relative merits of these types of warrant service. Out of necessity, then, the discussion may rightly delve into the various circumstances where the tactics might be employed.
First off, call me Jeff, Mr. White was my father. The issue of it was prejudicial if the subject was a gun owner was the only thing in this thread that makes it on topic at all here. Yet we don't know that Hasenei was legal gun owner, because all the article tells us is they were looking for a stolen police weapon. To me question that is on topic is if just legally owning a firearm should make you subject to a no knock raid if you get in trouble with the law. And as I said, in my personal experience just the ownership of a firearm didn't however there were other factors that may play into the decision.
You on one hand seem to think there is no room for discussion on possible restrictions of these tactics because in your experience the process for getting authorization for them has enough checks and balances. You have also implied that the rate of error was acceptable, even when innocent folks may have been involved.
It takes a judge to issue a no knock warrant. The police don't make that decision. As for the error rate, please go back and read what DMF said in post # 48:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=5318992&postcount=48
There are very few human endeavors that involve so many different people that have such a small error rate. Would it be nice if the error rate was zero? Yes. Is that possible? No.
But your defensive tone and "it's an acceptable level of error/collateral damage, so there is no reason to change it" attitude does very little to foster the intelligent and factual discussion you repeatedly advocate.
As I said before, cop bashing, or in this case, tactics-bashing, are not productive, but neither is denial that there may be ways to improve the situation.
How are you going to improve the situation then? You have to know what the situation is before you can discuss ways to improve it. Unfortunately too many here believe things like you just have to say the two magic words "officer safety" and everything is ok. That's fine, but when they refuse to believe people who actually work with those issues when they tell them it isn't so, it doesn't promote intelligent discussion either.