Knockless Warrants Upheld

Should the police have to announce they are serving a warrant? Balancing the rights of the accused and protection of evidence needed for prosecution.

Briefly — looking at this AP story via Yahoo!, the SCOTUS has upheld police entering without announcement for warranted searches. What does this really get us except a lot of gunfights? If someone crashes into your home without announcement, you have the right to shoot first and ask questions later. So now if someone does so, you need to worry that they are the law, and that they will kill you for trying to protect your home. Great. The only solution I see is to renovate. Place six feet of bricks behind all traditional entrances, and start building hidden passages entering and exiting your abode. It’s the only way. Let them rupture their internal organs trying to ram-batter solid steel plates. At least their curses at failure will serve as proper announcement of their presence and intentions. I mean, after all it is unreasonable to have a reasonable search and seizure without the simple courtesy of clearing up the question of legality. It’s not like they haven’t divebombed the wrong house on a lawful warrant before. It’s not like this makes sense. The whole reason is in the event you might be able to destroy the evidence they seek. Well last I checked until you are informed they want and have been granted legal right to “evidence,” you can destroy it all you want. Set up thermite lozenges of love with remote triggers attached to the doors and their barging without first disabling the system via a sixteen digit security code will result in a firebomb on the precious spice they seek to confiscate. It’s a bad ruling without sense except to bolster the “we’re tough, go Joe!” attitude that is so prevalent in the post-American Century. What’s next on the agenda, allowing officers to excavate your cess pool without first taking the proper steps to make sure it doesn’t flow over into your neighbor’s yard? The whole point of search warrants and the due process associated with them is to make sure that there is a cordial circumstance to precede and follow the admitted but necessary breach of public liberty and private rights. The more you erode it, the thinner the line. The thinner the line, the easier it is to cross it. The easier it is to cross it, the less free we all are.

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