No-Knock Raids & Their Laughable Justification
Plainclothes police performed a no-knock raid on the wrong address in Louisville late at night. The homeowner, suspecting intruders, fired his gun at them. Police respond by saturating the entire domicile with bullets, killing the homeowner’s girlfriend Breonna Taylor in the process. They then arrest and charge the homeowner for attempted murder for shooting at the police.
It's really difficult for me to understand why no-knock raids happen except for the completely uncharitable suspicion of police who get a rush from chaotic and destructive scenarios. The nominal justification usually provided is to prevent the destruction of evidence by the suspects inside the house. But this rationale is so fucking laughable. I have never ever once seen a scenario as a defense attorney where evidence was potentially destroyed because the police loudly announced themselves before entering a residence.
Think about it from where you are sitting at home right now. If the cops suddenly show up, knock, announce, wait 30 seconds, how much hypothetical evidence can you destroy in that time period? Flushing stuff down the toilet is the only feasible one, but that only takes small amounts and in all likelihood the associated paraphernalia will still be there with plenty of residue. You can't wipe hard drives that fast, and those are better off encrypted anyway. You can't melt down guns. You can't burn papers or clothing. Etc.
If you're about to raid a home, you ideally have staked it out and therefore had the chance to surround it. So the risk of flight should also be non-existent.
I'm genuinely at a loss. No-knock raids seem tailor-made to spook residents into thinking they're being invaded and to respond in kind. There are dozens and dozens of these situations, with Cory Maye probably kickstarting the persistent spotlight we have now.
And I know about evidence being destroyed because sometimes clients tell me about it. Or, sometimes they get caught in the act of trying to destroy evidence. I can think of a handful of recent examples:
One involved a felon possessing a gun. He gets a gun pulled on him in a crowd, he pulls his gun out, a police officer just happens to be nearby and notices something is wrong, but in the time the cop takes to get to the altercation, my client had successfully given the pistol to someone else in the crowd. This is the only successful one I know of (I was representing him on another matter).
Another was a honeypot drug bust where a dealer was lured with the promise of sex in exchange for drugs. He and his buddy get caught outside of their car and he has just enough time to swallow a cocktail of drug inventory he was holding. It was really dumb, because they got a warrant for his blood, but I can only imagine what a horrendous time he had in lockup. I saw the video; the guy was not having a good time.
DUI stop where the driver is caught on camera throwing an empty beer bottle out the window. He didn't do anything about the other 5 empty bottles in the backseat.
Possession of a stolen car that was stopped remotely by the Onstar system. The driver was caught on camera jumping over into the backseat and then accused the passenger of driving.
Gun fight ended up with someone seriously injured. His friend drove him to the emergency room. His friend also happened to have been caught on camera shooting a pistol, and he happens to be a felon. He gets arrested. While in jail, he calls another friend and asks him to clean up his car with bleach. The call was recorded.
Admittedly, many of these examples probably highlight a combination of lack of intelligence and desperation more than anything else. Destruction of evidence for sure happens, but to do it properly you need way way way more time and planning than the seconds or even minutes of time you'd gain by a knock-and-announce search warrant raid. Based on experience, I do not consider the universe of evidence destruction thwarted by no-knock raids worth thinking about.
If the deal is giving up going after mid-level drug dealers in exchange for no-knock raids, that's a win/win for me. I think people overestimating how easy it is to flush a significant amount of drugs down the toilet. If I gave you six 1lb packs of flour, how many can you quickly flush down the toilet before it clogs?
Similarly, I am not convinced by the safety angle. If you keep a gun, the whole point is to keep it within reach when you need it. A no-knock raid, especially in the middle of the night, only increases the danger of an aggressive response. This happens whether you're an innocent homeowner the victim of a wrong address, or a bona fide drug kingpin who is on the lookout of being the target of a drug robbery. If I'm sleeping and I hear a commotion at my front door, my first instinct is to definitely reach for my gun. Can you think of an example where lives were saved because of a no-knock raid?
What evidence would you need to see to conclude that no-knock raids are not worth the damage (collateral and direct) they cause?