zincwarrior said:
Name a non-hostage situation where there are exigent circumstances.
In virtually all hostage situations you wouldn't need a warrant at all as a result of the hot pursuit exception to the requirement for a search warrant. Unless you are talking about something more like a kidnapping where the victim is suspected to be held inside.
The three general exceptions to the knock-and-announce rule are:
1. Officers have reason to suspect the threat of violence.
2. Officers have reason to suspect evidence will be destroyed if warning is given.
3. Residents are already aware of officer's presence and authority.
zincwarrior said:
Note the key part of your sentence: as they go in the door. Thats at the same time flash bangs are going off, shouting etc. etc.
Why go in at all? Make them come out.
Surround and call-out is a valid option. I agree in most cases it would be better than a no-knock warrant for most drug-related searches. The potential for destruction of evidence is high, but it may be possible to have the utility company block the residence sewer and water lines, which drastically limits the ability to flush drugs. Even when they are flushed, the solution is to test the toilet bowl water. Since drug charges are based on the weight of illicit drugs possessed or sold, it may even be possible to charge based on the volume of water contaminated with illegal drugs.
In my state we do this with marijuana-laced edibles, which is really kind of funny, because since brownies weigh so much more than just leaf marijuana, the brownies will actually get you in a ton more trouble.
OuTcAsT said:
And, you would be totally wrong. The dashcams on the police cruisers in this city run a continuous loop from beginning of shift, until end. I saw the video, from several minutes before the officer even saw my truck, followed it for about 2.5 miles, ( at night) before he "lit him up" .
The judge also saw the verbal interaction after the stop, he commented that the officer had no justifiable reason for the stop.let alone the search request. It was an obvious lie under oath.
I stand corrected, then, and I apologize. I didn't know some agencies record the entire shift. Your son ran into a dishonest police officer. That certainly happens. It's strange that the officer did that knowing the entire shift was recorded.
What were you told by the officer's agency when you filed a complaint?
OuTcAsT said:
Thanks for making my point !
As I understand it, your point was that there has been a "huge change" in the attitude of police officers over the years to be 1. adversarial toward the public, 2. more interested in making arrests than deterring crime, 3. no longer interested in protecting the public.
I then pointed out that there have been aggressive, corrupt, criminal, and/or rude police since the dawn of time. My point was that the existence of this minority subgroup of police officers is not
prima facie evidence of the downward trend you claim. I further pointed out that theories of how policing should be conducted have over time grown more community-oriented, not less, and that many of the most rampant and wide-scale abuses by law enforcement are found in the past, not the present, and are the exception, not the rule.
OuTcAsT said:
Indeed, see my comment about serving on a Grand Jury.
I'm not sure whether or not you have a problem with that practice, but the legal standard is quite clear that as long as officers observe a traffic violation, they are able to conduct a stop, regardless of whether or not that was the real reason the officer wanted to conduct the stop.
You ask for "evidence" I believe any thinking adult, that is in my age group, (50+) can tell you from personal experience and simple observation that the mindset has changed drastically and, not for the better. Obfuscate all you like, whom do I believe ? You, or my lying eyes ?
You seem solidly convinced that the plural of "anecdote" is "data." It is not. If you spent an entire year collecting stories about bad cops and managed to come up enough to tarnish even a tenth of one percent of the law enforcement officers in the United States, I would be extremely surprised. If you are interested in trying, there are about 750,000 police officers in the United States, so you will need to come up with at least 750 verifiable incidents of police misconduct.
Even if you somehow managed to do that... you'll have only managed to implicate one in a thousand police officers, which is hardly grounds to make sweeping claims about what all, most, or even many cops are doing wrong, and says nothing about the relative frequency of abuse over time, for which you have still provided no evidence.
Do you regularly judge groups of people by the actions of (let's generously allow that you did find 750 incidents of police misconduct) 0.001% of the group?
That's certainly enough to indict CCW holders, or actually pretty much any group of people you care to name, as a bunch of psychotic loonies.
