Killeen TX: Multiple officers shot serving no knock warrant

[srothstein]

I really did not see much difference, the way he explained it. What difference does it really make if you just tap on the door at 3:00 am, and then break in the door, or just omit the tapping?

The only real difference is that by tapping first, I can honestly testify that I did knock and announce myself. If I am willing to lie on the stand, then it does not make any difference at all. Most cops who do this really do want to obey the law and still make arrests, so they try to find loopholes around it. It is called noble cause corruption in the academic research studies on this. Corruption caused by cops trying to do the right thing.

By the way, he claimed he carried an open warrant around in his jacket. How is this done? I did not see it, but I believe him. He was a fed, in charge of many agents, covering a large portion of Texas.

It is not really done. An open warrant is illegal. A warrant must identify the person to be arrested or the property to be searched and the evidence to be seized. It must do so very specifically so there is no possibility of confusion. For example, a search warrant must have the address to be searched and a physical description of the building/property. It usually has the legal description of the land also.

Also, a search warrant must be served within a specific period of time. In Texas, for state warrants, that time is three days not including the day signed and the day returned. I don't know the federal rules on this but I know they are there.

He could have an open warrant but all it means is that it is the blank form the warrant application is printed on. It must be filled out and then signed by a judge to do any good.

[ShootDontTalk]

Well, I did make my living hunting criminals and executing warrants on dangerous suspects for over 21 years, and I believe that no knock warrants should be used only when there is strong evidence to believe that the suspects are violent and will shoot at police. An example would be a bank robbery team that has fired on police, guards, or customers.

I also believe that they should not be used in every circumstance where an officer can gin up some weak excuse for danger, e.g. the target has a CHL or is known to own firearms. According to that criterion, everyone on this forum qualifies for a no knock visit if a warrant is ever executed on their homes. I know from first hand experience that the potential for unnecessary casualties on both sides in these situations is high.

Officer safety is not well served by unnecessary use of this tactic, and it poses extreme danger to the citizens it is used on. In a Dallas incident a few years back, a police lieutenant was shot in the neck and suffered severe permanent injuries as he went through a bedroom window on a no-knock warrant. The woman who shot him said she believed the man in black who was jumping through her smashed window was a home invader. Although she was charged with assault on an LEO, she was acquitted because what she said made sense to the jury. That officer would be living a full and healthy life today if he and his team had knocked and announced themselves.

Successful police work depends upon the support of and respect from the community, and unnecessarily violent military tactics stretch the bonds between the people and their police. Police leaders need to reread the Constitution and remember that is they who serve their communities, not the other way around. The criterion for use of force should be the least that achieves a lawful purpose, not the most that can be gotten away with. That understanding appears to have been lost, and it needs to be restored before the relationship between communities and their police turns adversarial as it is in danger of doing today.

Very well said sir. Thank you.

[VMI77]

If I was going after a stash house with armed and violent felons I would want the element of surprise to rush in, get control of the suspects before they could get to their weapons. I would hate to have to knock and stand fast knowing they getting set up with their firearms pointed at the door waiting for you to enter. Who wants to be the first to go in?

What's that have to do with the case in question? In any case, really, how many drug dealers shoot it out with the police? I somehow doubt that most of them are "heroic" criminals ready to die in a volley of police gun fire. And come on, if this is some stash house with armed and violent felons, how would they not know they were about to be raided by the police? Wouldn't such dangerous criminals have surveillance cameras and people on watch? Anyone that would get into a gun battle with a SWAT team would be on guard and they'd be ready for the entry whether the police knocked or not.

Ones I've heard with our local swat they went no knock early in the morning and the suspects were still asleep. Beside them was loaded firearms, if they would have knocked and waited that would have given them the time needed to set up a defense at the door or baracde themselves in.

If no knocks warrants were as bad as everyone makes them out to be then why are deptments all over the US still using them? In the right situations they are very effective and that's why depts use them. Sometimes things go wrong but I would rather have the element of surprise rather than knock and wait for someone to decide to run out a window or stand and fight. Our local DEA use no knocks on 80% ( word of mouth by a local agent) of the warrants they execute for a reason, they work and provide the least amount of risk for officers. If anyone has any studies suggesting otherwise or someone who has executed warrants on dangerous suspects I'm all ears. Until then, I'm more inclined to listen to those who make a living doing such.

So, "the least amount of risk for officers" is our criteria now? Guess we could just incarcerate everyone who isn't leo, that would make it real safe for officer's. Or have all leo stay barricaded in the station, that would be safe, too.

Yeah, us poor misguided members of the public thought the least amount of risk to the public was the criteria. If it's least risk for officers why even bother entering....just shoot them through the window while they're sleeping.

[nightmare69]

Officer safety is a huge issue. It's why Terry v Ohio allows officers to frisk a person for officer safety even though there is no probable cause to arrest the person frisked.

Warren v District of Columba says officers have no legal duty to protect the public. Now I would hope all LEOs would put the public first and do whatever is nessisary to protect the citizens.

[WildBill]

Officer safety is a huge issue.

The injudicious use of no-knock warrants is a huge safety issue for all people involved. Dogs too.

[jmra]

Officer safety is a huge issue.

The injudicious use of no-knock warrants is a huge safety issue for all people involved. Dogs too.

[WildBill]

Officer safety is a huge issue.

The injudicious use of no-knock warrants is a huge safety issue for all people involved. Dogs too.

I think that President Harry S Truman said it best: "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen."

[nightmare69]

If everyone feels that strongly about the issue then may I ask what are you doing about it? Are you raising awareness to the right people or writing lawmakers to address your concerns? Or do you just enjoy the debate and won't bother taking it past a forum or Facebook?

I always hear good debates online but it seems people could careless about taking the fight to the right people who can do something about it.

[WildBill]

If everyone feels that strongly about the issue then may I ask what are you doing about it? Are you raising awareness to the right people or writing lawmakers to address your concerns? Or do you just enjoy the debate and won't bother taking it past a forum or Facebook?

I always hear good debates online but it seems people could careless about taking the fight to the right people who can do something about it.

The law is already written in the US Constitution. Throughout the years many court decisions have eroded the rights against illegal search and seizure guaranteed by the constitution. The "war on drugs" has been used as a justification for the proliferation of many of these decisions and policies. What we are "doing about it" is done through the legal system by litigation in the appellate courts and trying to curtail illegal search and seizure by challenging those searches.

We are also trying to elect congressmen and senators and presidents who follow the constitution and appoint judges who will do the same.

On this forum, some of us are trying impart some wisdom and educate some young people who choose a career in law enforcement so they don't continue to foster an "us versus them" mentality that creates and heightens barriers between themselves and the public whom they are supposed to serve. I hope that we are all on the same side.

[jmra]

If everyone feels that strongly about the issue then may I ask what are you doing about it? Are you raising awareness to the right people or writing lawmakers to address your concerns? Or do you just enjoy the debate and won't bother taking it past a forum or Facebook?

I always hear good debates online but it seems people could careless about taking the fight to the right people who can do something about it.

Perhaps I will suggest that the constitution should be taught at the police academy.

[srothstein]

I think I see some of the problems with the police-citizen relationship. One is a question of self-interest. Clearly, the citizens and the police do not agree on whose safety is or should be most important to the police officers during certain operations. Allow me to suggest that anyone who thinks any actor is not going to put that actor's own safety first is simply deluding themselves. Police work is dangerous and officers routinely put their lives on the line doing their job. I certainly would not expect them to not minimize the risk when they can. Having said that, I also certainly expect them to take a certain amount of risk and accept it as part of their job. Part of this debate is certainly going to be how much risk is reasonable, and that is a very hard line to draw. So far, everyone on the thread seems to agree that it has been drawn too far in the favor of officer safety, but I don't think we will agree on exactly how far back to move it.

A second part is that there is some misunderstanding about the law and how officers are taught in the academy. Every officer is taught the Constitution. In most cases, police cadets must memorize the entire Fourth Amendment and be able to recite it and write it out perfectly. But the average person does not know it nearly as well as the officers do. For example, there is nothing in the Fourth that forbids searches without warrants. It forbids "unreasonable" searches only. The definition of reasonable changes as time goes along. I, personally, hate the use of these indefinite terms in the Constitution and am glad they are not in the Second. So, as the courts have interpreted the Fourth and made decisions, they have not truly eroded any rights. They may have recognized a different definition of what is reasonable, but the right against unreasonable searches is still intact. Again, I personally do not agree with many of their decisions, starting with Terry v. Ohio. But I know what my opinion counts for.


So we do have an answer or two. Both require the people to get active though, which minimizes the odds of them working. Citizens can get active and communicate with their elected representatives to limit the actions of the police. This is the best way because the police are directly under local control, in most cases. The local politicians can set rules for the local police. More importantly, they control the funding. Make sure they do not fund a full time SWAT unit for search warrants that do not justify that level of force. That really is in our hands as citizens.

The second thing is to get active and let judges know what we consider reasonable. The best way might be public, peaceful demonstrations against bad decisions. Let legislators know what we feel so that when they confirm judges (at federal level) they know what to look for. Ask judges how they feel when they are campaigning for office (at the state and local level). Judicial elections are low interest to most people but can be very important.

I know most of us in this forum are already at least somewhat politically active. I am just pointing out how we might be in the minority and need to get others involved also.

[nightmare69]

If everyone feels that strongly about the issue then may I ask what are you doing about it? Are you raising awareness to the right people or writing lawmakers to address your concerns? Or do you just enjoy the debate and won't bother taking it past a forum or Facebook?

I always hear good debates online but it seems people could careless about taking the fight to the right people who can do something about it.

Perhaps I will suggest that the constitution should be taught at the police academy.

If you only knew how deep we go into the consistution and the tons of Supreme Court cases that pertain to LE that we had to memorize. You have absolutely no idea what is and is not taught at the academy.

[Excaliber]

If everyone feels that strongly about the issue then may I ask what are you doing about it? Are you raising awareness to the right people or writing lawmakers to address your concerns? Or do you just enjoy the debate and won't bother taking it past a forum or Facebook?

I always hear good debates online but it seems people could careless about taking the fight to the right people who can do something about it.

Perhaps I will suggest that the constitution should be taught at the police academy.

If you only knew how deep we go into the consistution and the tons of Supreme Court cases that pertain to LE that we had to memorize. You have absolutely no idea what is and is not taught at the academy.

During my LE career, we were always prepared to use whatever level of force was needed to deal with suspects, but we had a clear understanding that it was dead wrong to use it preemptively when it wasn't needed. Marginal cases were heavily scrutinized, and deviations were not tolerated.

That understanding is what is missing in today's training of police officers, and nightmare's posts here are a case in point. I don't fault him personally because he has been surrounded by a culture that, prior to this discussion, he had no way of knowing is very recent and a huge change from the way police work has been done in this country since police departments were first formed.

Many police organizations now have a culture that holds that any excuse they can come up with for using high levels of force is good enough. That's why when we see officers shoot pets in their own yards (too many cases to cite), kill elderly men in their own garage in response to a false burglar alarm at a house across the street (Fort Worth) or terrorize an entire family with a middle of the night no knock raid on the wrong house (too many cases to cite), the only reaction from the agency is "oops". In other words, yeah, we screwed up, too bad on you.

My son encountered this about ten years ago and resigned his commission with a police agency in Florida because that agency required its officers to use excessive force on non-resisting suspects. He knows the constitution and wasn't having any of that.

The instances of excessive use of force are becoming so numerous that just the few that hit the news are being published nearly every day. Here's today's example of another incident. Note the comments and whether they indicate an improved or diminished respect for law enforcement resulted from this officer's actions.

There is indeed a problem here, and it's a big one.

[Charles L. Cotton]

If everyone feels that strongly about the issue then may I ask what are you doing about it? Are you raising awareness to the right people or writing lawmakers to address your concerns? Or do you just enjoy the debate and won't bother taking it past a forum or Facebook?

I always hear good debates online but it seems people could careless about taking the fight to the right people who can do something about it.

Perhaps I will suggest that the constitution should be taught at the police academy.

If you only knew how deep we go into the consistution and the tons of Supreme Court cases that pertain to LE that we had to memorize. You have absolutely no idea what is and is not taught at the academy.

During my LE career, we were always prepared to use whatever level of force was needed to deal with suspects, but we had a clear understanding that it was dead wrong to use it preemptively when it wasn't needed. Marginal cases were heavily scrutinized, and deviations were not tolerated.

That understanding is what is missing in today's training of police officers, and nightmare's posts here are a case in point. I don't fault him personally because he has been surrounded by a culture that, prior to this discussion, he had no way of knowing is very recent and a huge change from the way police work has been done in this country since police departments were first formed.

Many police organizations now have a culture that holds that any excuse they can come up with for using high levels of force is good enough. That's why when we see officers shoot pets in their own yards (too many cases to cite), kill elderly men in their own garage in response to a false burglar alarm at a house across the street (Fort Worth) or terrorize an entire family with a middle of the night no knock raid on the wrong house (too many cases to cite), the only reaction from the agency is "oops". In other words, yeah, we screwed up, too bad on you.

My son encountered this about ten years ago and resigned his commission with a police agency in Florida because that agency required its officers to use excessive force on non-resisting suspects. He knows the constitution and wasn't having any of that.

The instances of excessive use of force are becoming so numerous that just the few that hit the news are being published nearly every day. Here's today's example of another incident. Note the comments and whether they indicate an improved or diminished respect for law enforcement resulted from this officer's actions.

There is indeed a problem here, and it's a big one.

Thank you for this very timely and accurate post. For those who don't know Excalibur, he was a high-ranking officer with a large police department.

Chas.

[puma guy]

This episode is not exactly the same, down the slippery slope we go.
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/05/fed-c ... r-charges/
This case involves guns, but the principle will be applied to just about any circumstance law enforcement deems "necessary" I fear.