There’s an article from the AP about Georgia reconsidering its no-knock raid policies. To quote a paragraph from the story:

The measure was prompted by the Nov. 21 shootout between Kathryn Johnston and three police officers during a no-knock search of her Atlanta home. When the officers entered without warning, police say that Johnston, 92, fired a handgun at them and that the officers returned fire, killing her. An autopsy concluded she was shot five or six times.

This reflexively calls out the Fourth Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So, the question is, what qualifies as an unreasonable search and seizure? The answer to that lies in finding out what would cause someone to require a no-knock raid in the first place - what kind of actions are being performed that would tell the police that they need to use overwhelming paramilitary force to resolve the situation? At the risk of repeating myself, there are two reasons:

1. Evidence might be flushed away or otherwise removed during the standard course of serving a warrant.
2. There might be armed individuals that are either a threat to police or a threat to others in the area (hostage situation, for example, or a well-armed gang holdout).

As far as I’m concerned, the first reason is not good enough for a no-knock raid - it’s too broad. If that alone is all that’s required for a no-knock raid, just about any warrant search can be served with a SWAT team since, during the course of a warrant search, there is almost always evidence that can be quickly removed. Endangering American citizens and removing their rights because we’re fortunate enough to have indoor plumbing and ready access to household cleansers is not acceptable. With regards to #2, it should go without saying that having a bunch of well-armed, screaming, gun-toting police officers swarm your house with flash grenades and tear gas is almost certainly not going to encourage you to become less of a threat to yourself, those around you, or the police officers. On the contrary, it’s almost guaranteed to elicit a fear response, which will cause you to respond with as much force as you can muster against the source of that fear. People in fear are not rational and are far more prone to hurt themselves and anything around them. This also makes the job of the police officer more difficult since, by using a no-knock raid in the first place, you’re implicitly communicating to them that they have something to be afraid of - if they didn’t, why wouldn’t they just knock on the front door? Consequently, you’ve gone from one possibly well-armed and fearful group to one definitely well-armed and slightly less fearful group (the police) against one possibly well-armed and definitely fearful group. How is that an improvement, exactly?

I think there are very, very few good excuses for no-knock raids (hostage situations, maybe). I also think that no-knock raids are the police equivalent of the fire department choosing to quell a house fire by burning down every surrounding building so it doesn’t spread. They just makes a bad problem much, much worse.

I am against no-knock raids. I am against policies and laws that restrict constitutionally-enshrined rights and freedoms. I know I’m not breaking new political ground here with this, but I’m not willing to throw our rights down the toilet because we’re afraid of a few drug dealers.