Supreme court upholds no-knock warrants
In a 5-4 ruling today, the U.S. supreme court upheld the right of the police to barge into your home without annoncing themselves. At first glance, this seems like a victory for law enforcement and a setback for criminals. I'm sure that no-knock warrants help police to preserve evidence in certain cases, but I do have some serious concerns about this.
There have been numerous reported instances of police barging into the WRONG home. Usually this happens when they've gotten the address wrong. When I was a volunteer firefighter, I remember one such occasion. A fire chief on another department in our county mistakenly kicked in someone's door because he got the wrong address on a fire call. This is dangerous business. What is a person supposed to think when he is a law abiding citizen, asleep in his room, and in the middle of the night hears his door crashing down? I can tell you what my first thought is, and it would probably result in getting someone a very bad case of lead poisoning.
This scenario is not only a terrible thought, but it has happened. This policy is extremely dangerous to both police and citizens, and is almost always used to seize drugs. Are we really willing to gamble with citizens' and police officers' lives in order to enforce our prohibition policy?
Justice Breyer wrote for the dissenting 4, and said, among other things that the decision "erases 90 years of supreme court president".
Sleep tight.
There have been numerous reported instances of police barging into the WRONG home. Usually this happens when they've gotten the address wrong. When I was a volunteer firefighter, I remember one such occasion. A fire chief on another department in our county mistakenly kicked in someone's door because he got the wrong address on a fire call. This is dangerous business. What is a person supposed to think when he is a law abiding citizen, asleep in his room, and in the middle of the night hears his door crashing down? I can tell you what my first thought is, and it would probably result in getting someone a very bad case of lead poisoning.
This scenario is not only a terrible thought, but it has happened. This policy is extremely dangerous to both police and citizens, and is almost always used to seize drugs. Are we really willing to gamble with citizens' and police officers' lives in order to enforce our prohibition policy?
Justice Breyer wrote for the dissenting 4, and said, among other things that the decision "erases 90 years of supreme court president".
Sleep tight.
posted by Jason E. Peck at 9:37 AM
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