Almost right on no-knock warrants...

Kim suggests that no-knock warrants are a bad thing, and that when the police screw up and raid the wrong house, the occupants of that house should not be penalized for shooting back regardless of anything else the police might do.

1. I will grant, very reluctantly, the fact that occasionally the police will require extraordinary powers in order to catch serious criminals.
2. However, on the basis that extreme measures also require extreme caution, I will also stipulate that if a LEO (or more than one LEO) gets shot during a no-knock raid which has been made at the wrong address, that the homeowner MAY NOT BE CHARGED with any felony.

He's almost right. I have two quibbles.

First, the minor one -- why restrict it to felonies? If an LEO gets shot, or the like, while executing a no-knock warrant on the wrong house, the occupants should get off scott-free for anything found in the search or anything they do to defend themselves. The LEO is there illegally, and that's that.

Second, the whole concept of no-knock warrants is repugnant to a free society. There are very narrow cases which arguably require such a warrant; the obvious ones are hostage situations or terrorists with the remote control to a bomb in their hideout. Outside of rare cases like those, nothing is gained by a no-knock warrant. They should not even be issued.

Given that, I see no need to restrict the self-defense principle above to cases where there was a mistake on the warrant; as far as I am concerned it should be applied to ANY and ALL no-knock warrants.

If the police make the decision to go in without knocking, they are starting a fight, and no one should be blamed for the actions they take in self-defense. Whatever the original reason for searching was on the warrant can be fought over in court, but any actions taken in response to the raid come with a get-out-of-jail-free card.

You may be thinking that this leaves no incentive for criminals to surrender rather than shooting back. I disagree. The incentive is simple. If they shoot back, the police will quite likely kill them on the spot. If they do not shoot back, they will quite likely live to face trial. That's a big incentive.

Seems like simple common sense to me. If you break into someone's house with your gun out, deliberately denying them the opportunity to consider their actions rationally and evaluate who you are and what you want, they are going to perceive a life-threatening emergency and shoot at you. Being a criminal doesn't change that, especially these days, when tiny little innocuous things are often felonies.

Posted on 2005-12-26 01:04:29.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

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