Pubdate: Sat, 31 Jan 2015
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2015 Star Advertiser
Contact: 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154
Author: Jacob Sullum, Creators Syndicate

PROPOSED GEORGIA LAW WOULD REIN IN AGGRESSIVE COP RAIDS

The last time the Georgia legislature considered a bill aimed at 
restricting no-knock search warrants, it was prompted by a 2006 drug 
raid in which Atlanta police killed Kathryn Johnston, a 92-year-old 
woman who grabbed a revolver to defend herself against the armed men 
crashing into her home.

This time around, the precipitating event was a 2014 drug raid in 
which a Habersham County SWAT team burned and mutilated a 
19-month-old boy, Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh, by tossing a 
flash-bang grenade into his crib.

Any reform that makes such horrifying incidents less likely is 
welcome. But the proposed changes deal with just one aspect of the 
aggressive paramilitary tactics that needlessly endanger police, 
their targets and innocent bystanders.

Bou Bou's Law, introduced last week by Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, 
would allow no-knock warrants, which authorize police to enter homes 
without announcing themselves, only in cases where the police can 
show probable cause to believe that making their presence known prior 
to entry "would likely pose a significant and imminent danger to 
human life or imminent danger of evidence being destroyed."

That rule is stricter than the standard the Supreme Court has said is 
required by the Fourth Amendment: "reasonable suspicion" that 
knocking and announcing "would be dangerous or futile" or "would 
inhibit the effective investigation of the crime."

It's not clear that Fort's proposed restriction would have spared Bou 
Bou the injuries that have left his family with $1.6 million in 
medical expenses and forced him to undergo a series of surgeries that 
will continue into adulthood.

The cops who raided the home where he was staying with his sisters 
and parents were looking for his cousin Wanis Thonetheva, a 
small-time meth dealer, and they argued that his history of gun 
charges suggested they would face violent resistance.

It turned out that Thonetheva no longer lived in the house, where 
police found no drugs or weapons. He was unarmed when police arrested 
him later that day at a different location.

The Habersham County grand jury that investigated the raid 
nevertheless concluded that Thonetheva's history justified the 
no-knock warrant. Even under the stricter standard favored by Fort, a 
judge might agree.

Assuming police could not meet that test and therefore had to 
announce themselves, it might not have made any difference, because 
the raid occurred between 2 and 3 a.m., when everyone in the house 
was asleep. It is doubtful whether the Phonesavanhs would have heard 
and understood the police, let alone that they would have had enough 
time to answer the door before it was knocked down.

Police are supposed to wait a "reasonable time" after announcing 
themselves, but it's not clear what that means.

According to a 2003 Supreme Court decision, the relevant question is 
not how long it takes to answer the door, but how long it takes to 
flush drugs down the toilet. In that case, the court said 15 to 20 
seconds was plenty of time. For people awakened in the middle of the 
night, that is probably not enough.

Another Georgia bill, introduced by Rep. Kevin Tanner, R-Dawsonville, 
would require that no-knock search warrants be executed between 6 
a.m. and 10 p.m. "unless the judge for good cause expressly 
authorizes execution at another time."

A similar timing expectation for all searches would make the 
knock-and-announce rule more meaningful.

The Habersham County grand jury found that the botched raid in which 
Bou Bou was injured and the "hurried, sloppy" investigation that 
preceded it could be explained by a false sense of urgency.

"Whenever reasonably possible, suspects (should) be arrested away 
from a home," the jurors said. "There should be no such thing as an 
'emergency' in drug investigations."

It is bad enough that police respond violently to peaceful 
transactions involving arbitrarily proscribed substances.

When they kill old ladies and burn babies in the process, we have to 
ask what they hope to accomplish and whether it's worth the price.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom