Forum on "no-knock" raids at Cato

[tigre]

I wanted to give everyone a heads-up that the Cato Institute is hosting a panel on Thursday about the appropriateness of no-knock raids as a police tactic. Radley Balko, Cheye Calvo (the Berwyn Heights, MD mayor whose home was raided in July) and Peter Christ of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition are going to be speaking. If you're in the area you can attend for free and get to ask questions, but if not you can catch the video or audio of the event and get more information here.

This is an important issue for gun owners, as people have been charged with very serious crimes or even killed by police when they attempted to defend their homes from what they thought was a home invasion. It sounds like this should be a good discussion and will hopefully garner more exposure for an issue that doesn't get much coverage in the mainstream media.

 

[freakshow10mm]

No Knock means they still have to announce.

 

[tigre]

No Knock means they still have to announce.

Well, they may have to say they announced, or they may announce in a way that would be difficult to hear, especially in the midst of the commotion of your door being kicked in while you're asleep. Regardless, it's police coming into private residences in a violent manner and has led to some very negative outcomes on both sides, so I don't think any technical requirement to announce that they're police really changes the overall dynamic of the situation all that much. Plus, that's the phrase used in the title of the forum.

 

[Treo]

Tigre has two things to say

 

[gbran]

Now we even have home invaders doing no knock raids and immitating the police.

 

[Old School]

No Knock means they still have to announce.

Now we even have home invaders doing no knock raids and imitating the police.

Yep. No-knocks are a no-go in my opinion. It is just plain unnecessary and to damn dangerous. Not to mention how many wrong house and bad information scenarios there have been. They were meant to be used in very specific circumstances, but like most things, as soon as they had the ability to get these warrants, they started to abuse and misuse them. I have even seen news stories where they have busted in, injred and arrested totally innocent people on a "hot tip". It is a power that they should not have.

 

[Z-Michigan]

I've been thinking about this issue. IMHO, the ONLY situation in which no-knock is appropriate would be when someone is actually in the process of shooting hostages. And that wouldn't be something police would enter with a warrant, it would be an emergency situation with no time to get a warrant.

There is no other situation where no-knock is justified. They make claims about destroying evidence, blah blah, but really most of that evidence can be recovered quite easily. And even if some may be permanently destroyed, the number of people wrongfully killed in no-knock raids is vastly too high to justify them.

 

[Mainiac]

Amen to the above, they might lose some evidence or I might lose my life? No contest in my book. In very, very limited instances only.

 

[Jeff White]

Off topic....take it to APS