This isn’t new news, but it’s worth re-mentioning: No-knock raids are “a tactic that has grown in use from 2,000 to 3,000 raids a year in the mid-1980s, to 70,000 to 80,000 annually.”
Maybe that doesn’t bother you at all. But it should.
A no-knock raid is when police simply bust down your door at 5AM in sort of police version of “shock and awe.”
A lot of “knock” raids are basically the same, but the “entry team” (which sounds almost as benign as some Walmart “greeting team”) will shout “police, open the door!” as the battering ram goes into its backswing.
"That's just going to increase invasions of privacy and tragic harm to both residents and officers," he says.
The guy from the ACLU sums it up nicely (to the chagrin of the ACLU hatin' types that seem to inhabit the PoliceOne site). The comments on the story are largely depressing, by the way.
Since so many officers, particularly SWAT and Narcs, don't seem to be impressed with constitutional arguments (perhaps they, like George W. Bush, believe the constitution is "just a god damn piece of paper), let me put it this way. If you guys keep pushing for no-knock raids, more police will be injured or killed upon entry in the near future. If it doesn't bother you to kill someone for holding a golf club, then think about it this way: you or one of your "brothers" could be at risk too.
If you barge through my door in the dead of night, I will emerge from sleep ready to fight. I don't care who you are. I don't have a firearm, but I do have enough combatives training to severely injure a few of the invaders before I am taken down. I am not involved in criminal activity, but anyone can get mixed up in these messes due to the shoddy work done in many narcotics investigations.
It doesn't have to be this way!
Dave H- IL
If you barge through my door in the dead of night, I will emerge from sleep ready to fight. I don't care who you are. I don't have a firearm, but I do have enough combatives training to severely injure a few of the invaders before I am taken down.
If you really want to mess them up then get rid of your golf clubs and baseball bats and then Krazy Glue all your hammers and large knives to the bottoms of the drawers. Nothing brings the funny like a policeman's frantic early am call to the evidence room.