Pubdate: Mon, 26 Jun 2006
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Copyright: 2006 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact:  http://www.sltrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383
Author: Robyn Blummer, Salt Lake Tribune
Cited: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition http://www.leap.cc
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Fourth+Amendment
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?247 (Crime Policy - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?233 (LEAP)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?227 (Cole, Jack)

SUPREME COURT HAS UNLEASHED AN 'INVADING ARMY'

The U.S. Supreme Court just eviscerated the "knock and announce" 
rules that require police to announce their presence and give 
residents a bit of time before smashing in their door. Justice 
Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in Hudson v. Michigan discounted 
the privacy interest involved, sneering that "knock and announce" 
amounts to little more than the right "not to be intruded upon in 
one's nightclothes."

(I don't know about him, but I would put a pretty hefty premium on 
avoiding that particular scenario.)

But Scalia has a point in implying that the case has little practical 
importance, since the protocol that police knock, identify themselves 
and then wait 15 or 20 seconds before entering, has gone the way of 
the 50-cent cup of coffee. It can still be found, but not often.

The Joe Friday approach to conducting a search has been replaced by 
Rambo in riot gear because years earlier the high court permitted the 
waiver of the "knock and announce" requirement - a rule grounded in 
our 4th Amendment privacy rights - in almost every circumstance. If 
there's a chance that evidence will be destroyed, such as the 
possibility of drugs being flushed down the toilet, or a potential 
for physical violence - police suspecting there is a gun in the home, 
for instance - the Supreme Court has said it is not necessary to give 
advanced notice of entry.

We now have plenty of experience with "no-knock" warrants, as they 
are called, and the trail of victims this terrorizing tactic has left 
behind. Radley Balko, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato 
Institute, says that he has documented nearly 200 cases of "wrong 
door" raids occurring in the last 15 years, where the police broke 
into an innocent person's house. He says the correct figure is 
probably higher, but police and prosecutors don't generally bother 
keeping statistics on the operations they botch.

And when police come charging through the wrong door, they aren't 
dressed in a trench-coat and Dockers. These raids are typically 
conducted by militarized SWAT teams, outfitted for war. They are 
dressed in black masks and carry military-issue automatic weapons and 
other paramilitary gear, obtained gratis from the Pentagon. People 
who experienced such a raid must have felt like they were being 
attacked by an invading army. It isn't any wonder that, as in war, 
there is significant "collateral damage." Balko has counted two dozen 
innocent people who died during one of these raids.

Some of the more notorious examples include the 1994 case of 
75-year-old retired Methodist minister Accelyne Williams, who was 
reading a Bible in his living room when Boston police crashed through 
his door with sledge hammers. He died of a heart attack after being 
wrestled to the ground and handcuffed.

Similarly, in 2003, Alberta Spruill, a 57-year-old employee of New 
York City, died after police battered her door in and threw a 
concussion grenade inside. The coroner ruled that Spruill's death was 
a homicide. She had been scared to death.

Sometimes, the victim gets shot because his natural reaction to an 
invasion by gun-toting masked men is to reach for a firearm himself.

Is this highly confrontational tactic really necessary to secure 
evidence or ensure police safety when serving drug warrants? Not in 
the least, Jack Cole says.

Cole is the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition 
(http://www.leap.cc), an international drug-policy reform group made 
up of former drug warriors - police, prosecutors, wardens - who 
believe the U.S. War on Drugs has been a destructive failure. He is 
also a retired detective lieutenant and undercover narcotics 
investigator who spent 26 years with the New Jersey State Police.

According to Cole, "too much violence is instigated by the police and 
it's just not necessary" to do the job. Cole says a war metaphor has 
no place in domestic policing in a democratic society. When there is 
a war, there has to be an enemy, Cole says, and since 110 million 
people in this country above the age of 12 have admitted to having 
used an illegal drug, "The enemy is us."

Cole says that whenever he served a warrant, he was able to come up 
with some ruse to get an occupant to open the door without breaking 
it down or using violence. "You just don't have to go in as a SWAT 
team," Cole says.

SWAT teams have proliferated not because they are needed but because 
police like to play soldier with relatively little of the battlefield 
risk; and they have been goosed along by a federal government that 
hands out surplus military implements like candy.

The only backstop to all this has been the U.S. Supreme Court and its 
rulings establishing basic standards for police interactions with the 
public. But with the Hudson case, it is pretty clear there is a 
five-member majority for loosening whatever reins still exist. So, 
expect the "war" to get more bloody and its casualty list to get 
longer. Welcome to the Roberts court. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake