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No knock no good

Arizona Daily Wildat

A bill allowing police officers to conduct unannounced - "no knock" - searches passed the Arizona House of Representatives and was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration yesterday. It allows officers to conduct these "no knock" searches if they feel that announcing their search endangers their lives or jeopardizes the effectiveness of the search. Though unannounced searches are not in direct conflict with Constitutional protections, they do erode those protections and should not be condoned.

The bill - HB2394 - is in concordance with recent Supreme Court decisions making "no knock" searches Constitutionally acceptable. The Supreme Court serves as a final defense of the Constitution, and for it to be party to the erosion of the Constitutional erosion is unacceptable. Unannounced search and seizure isn't overtly contrary to the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure because unannounced search and seizure isn't necessarily unreasonable. This type of search does, however, chip away at Fourth Amendment protections, pushing people down a slippery slope of diminishing rights.

"No knock" seizures are seen as way of getting a handle on criminals who slip out of the grip of the long arm of the law. Suspects can escape charges by destroying evidence before it is ferreted out by police officers with a warrant, and defendants in criminal cases often avoid convictions on technicalities related to the search and seizure process. Because of such situations, there is a fear that criminal rights are coming before victim rights, but this is a mischaracterization. Rights protected by the Fourth as well as Fifth and Sixth Amendments must cease to be seen as criminal rights, and come to be seen for what they are: rights of the accused.

In terms of these Constitutional protections, it is important to remember that they most pertain to the accused. When a person is suspected of having done something wrong an announced and authorized search is necessary because no actual wrongdoing has been proven. This means that law enforcement agencies have no right to search the private property of the suspected criminal, even if the object of the search may be lost. Police do not have an absolute right to conduct searches, people do have an absolute right to be protected from them.

Additionally, though "no knock" searches have the caveat that officers must fear for their lives, that people need to be protected from officers fearing for their lives has been amply demonstrated. In New York, a man with a wallet was gunned down by police officers fearing for their lives. Here in Tucson, we have seen cases in which people were killed by police officers who, unannounced, entered the wrong houses to search for drugs or suspects. Pima County agreed, yesterday, to pay damages to the family of a 15 year old boy who was shot and killed by a police officer who feared for his life. The boy allegedly had a knife. Granted, officers are put in intense situations, and it can be difficult to distinguish between an instance of life and death, and one of non-lethal conflict. Still, there is a tendency for officers in such situations to resort excessive, lethal force.

A second condition of the "no knock" warrant is that it must be approved by a magistrate, but this is no protection. Once obtained, a police officer can still waltz onto private property unannounced in the style of a home invasion - a tactic with which local law enforcement agencies are familiar. And again, there is the tendency of officers to exceed legally prescribed bounds. A perfect example is that before the Supreme Court created Miranda rights - which are currently in danger of being repealed, another assault on our Constitutional protections - officers would commonly extract confessions from suspects by illegal means.

"No knock" bills come with lots of padding to soften the blow to the Constitution, but they cause damage nonetheless. They siphon off our Constitutional rights in a most insidious way - in the name of the law. In the light of the publicity violence has recently received, it is understandable that people would want more protection from criminals. The answer, however, does not lie in putting too much faith in the police, but in looking for the deeper solutions, the ones that never come easily.