No-knock warrant: Difference between revisions

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In the US, a no knock warrant is a warrant issued by a judge that allows law enforcement officers to enter a property without knocking and without identifying themselves as police. It is issued under the belief that any evidence they hope to find can be destroyed during the time that police identify themselves and the time they secure the area.

The Department of Justice writes:

Federal judges and magistrates may lawfully and constitutionally issue "no-knock" warrants where circumstances justify a no-knock entry, and federal law enforcement officers may lawfully apply for such warrants under such circumstances. Although officers need not take affirmative steps to make an independent re-verification of the circumstances already recognized by a magistrate in issuing a no-knock warrant, such a warrant does not entitle officers to disregard reliable information clearly negating the existence of exigent circumstances when they actually receive such information before execution of the warrant.

The number of no-knock raids has increased from 3,000 in 1981 to more than 50,000 last year, according to Peter Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. Raids that lead to deaths of innocents are relatively rare, but since the early 1980s, 40 bystanders have been killed, according to the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.

Examples

Kathryn Johnston (c1914-2006) was an elderly Atlanta, Georgia woman shot by three undercover police in her home on November 21, 2006 after she fired one shot in self defense, assuming her home was being invaded. While the officers were wounded by gunfire, none of the officers received life threatening injuries, but Johnston was killed by the officers.

References

Christian Science Monitor; November 29, 2006; After Atlanta raid tragedy, new scrutiny of police tactics. Kathryn Johnston, neighbors say, was scared. Drug activity had moved down from the seedy "Bluff" neighborhood in northwest Atlanta onto her street. Within the past year, she had put up burglar bars and installed extra locks. At some point, she had also obtained a gun. But in a case that is raising increasing questions about police conduct and the use of "no-knock" warrants, the octogenarian Ms. Johnston ended up using the gun in defense against police conducting a no-knock warrant issued in error. A team of police, who were conducting a "no-knock raid" in search of a drug dealer, burst into her home. Johnston opened fire. Three officers were wounded. Johnston was killed.

External links

DOJ

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 ==Examples==
-The following is far from an exhaustive list of deaths resulting from no knock warrants.
-*[[Kathryn Johnston]] (c1914-2006) was an elderly [[Atlanta, Georgia]] woman shot by three undercover police in her home on [[November 21]], [[2006]] after she fired one shot in self defense, assuming her home was being invaded. While the officers sustained injuries from friendly fire, none of the officers received life threatening injuries, but Johnston was killed by the officers.
+*[[Kathryn Johnston]] (c1914-2006) was an elderly [[Atlanta, Georgia]] woman shot by three undercover police in her home on [[November 21]], [[2006]] after she fired one shot in self defense, assuming her home was being invaded. While the officers were wounded by gunfire, none of the officers received life threatening injuries, but Johnston was killed by the officers.
-*When officers broke into the home of [[Cory Maye]], he shot one of the officers, citing self-defense, but was convicted and placed on death row. There is some controversy, as the officers didn't identify themselves as police.
-*In 1991, police in Dekalb County conduct a 2:30am no-knock raid on the home of Bobby Bowman, shoot and kill his 8 year old son.  No disciplinary actions were taken against the police.
-*On September 22, 2000, police in Riverdale, Georgia shoot and kill Lynette Gayle Jackson in an early morning, no-knock drug raid.  Less than a month earlier, Jackson had been at home when burglars broke into the same house. She escaped out a window and called the police while the intruders ransacked her home. When police arrived to answer the burglary call, they found a small bag of cocaine in the bedroom that belonged to Jackson’s boyfriend. While the quantity of cocaine wasn’t sufficient to press charges, police began a subsequent investigation of Jackson’s boyfriend that led to the September no-knock raid on her home.
-As that raid transpired, Jackson, believing she was being robbed again, held a gun in her bedroom as the SWAT team entered. That’s when the police opened fire, killing her. Her maintenance man later told reporters she had been frightened by the previous burglary. Jackson had asked him to install new locks, security bars on her windows, and a motion-detecting security light. The man told the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, “I think she was scared and she probably thought it was another break-in.”
-No disciplinary action was taken against the officers.
-* Early in the morning on September 30, 2005, police in Stockbridge, Georgia conduct a no-knock raid on the home of Roy and Belinda Baker. Officers break down the couple’s front door with a battering ram and toss in flashbang grenades. They hold the couple at gunpoint, handcuff them, and then send them out onto their porch, only partially clothed. Police ruin a family Bible and antique coffee table during the raid.
-Police eventually realize the intended target of the raid lives next door. The officers were not disciplined.
-*In 2006, police in Macon conduct a 1:30 am raid on a suspected drug house. Residents of the house say they were startled from sleep, believed they were being robbed, and shot to defend themselves. In the process, the shoot and kill Dep. Whitehead. Once the resident realize they’re being raided by police and not gang members, they surrender immediately. Prosecutors charge all five residents with murder, including two who had nothing to do with the shooting, one who wasn’t even home at the time of the raid. Two face the death penalty.
-*On September 4, 1998, police in Charlotte, North Carolina deploy a flashbang grenade and carry out a no-knock warrant for cocaine distribution on a tip from an informant. By the end of the raid, police have put four bullets in 56-year-old Charles Irwin Potts, killing him.
-Potts was not the target of the raid. He had visited the house to play a game of cards with friends. Police say Potts drew his gun (which he carried legally) and pointed it at them when they broke into the home. The three men in the house who saw the raid disagree, and say the gun never left Potts’ holster. Police found no cocaine, and made no arrests as a result of the raid. The men inside the house at the time of the raid thought they were being invaded by criminals. “Only thing I heard was a big boom,” said Robert Junior Hardin, the original target of the raid. “The lights went off and then they came back on . . . everybody reacted. We thought the house was being robbed.”
-No disciplinary action was taken against the police for Potts’ death.
-*In January 2005, police in Baltimore conduct an early-morning, no-knock raid on the the Noel home after finding marijuana seeds and traces of cocaine in the family trash. Noel, who’s step-daughter had been murdered years earlier, retrieves a legally registered handgun when she hears the sound of home invaders rushing up her steps. A SWAT officer kicks open her door, and Noel, in her nightgown, is clutching the gun, not pointed, when he enters. The SWAT officer, wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet, and carrying a bulletproof ballistics shield, hits Noel twice from the doorway, then shoots her a third time from point-blank range. She dies.
-Noel had no criminal record (her husband did, but his offense took place 35 years ago). She conducted Bible-study classes on her lunch breaks. Twenty months after the raid, and probably not coincidentally just weeks after the Noel family filed a civil rights suit, the Baltimore County Police Department awarded the officer who shot and killed Noel a medal for “bravery, courage, and valor” in shooting her.
-*On December 20, 2001, police in Travis County, Texas storm a mobile home on a no-knock drug warrant. Nineteen-year-old Tony Martinez, nephew of the man named in the warrant, is asleep on the couch at the time of the raid. Martinez was never suspected of any crime. When Martinez rises from the couch as police break into the home, deputy Derek Hill shoots Martinez in the chest, killing him. Martinez is unarmed.
-A grand jury later declines to indict Hill in the shooting, and he continues his employment wit the police department. The same Travis County paramilitary unit would later erroneously raid a woman’s home after mistaking ragweed for marijuana plants.
 ==See also==