Saturday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution has this article, by Bill Torpy and Rhonda Cook: Few results from no-knock warrants, critics say. The Atlanta PD even raided the house next door to Mrs. Johnston’s house about 18 months ago, finding no drugs, but the raid was eight days after the buy (which is the point of the staleness requirement, maybe?).
In March 2005, a team of Atlanta narcotics officers, armed with a “no-knock” search warrant, arrived at a northwest Atlanta home looking for a marijuana dealer known only as “Black.”
The door was open so the officers didn’t have to smash it down; they simply walked in and searched the home, said a resident of the house who was confronted in his living room by armed officers.
The officers found plastic bags and a small scale but no drugs, according to a police report, a point that the resident disputes. Police also did not find “Black” and made no arrests.
The house at 929 Neal St. is next door to and shares a driveway with the home of Kathryn Johnston, the elderly woman who was killed last week in a shootout with Atlanta narcotics officers who came to search for drugs.
The fatal raid, in which three officers were wounded, has shined a spotlight on how the narcotics officers target houses to raid and the tactics used in those raids.
According to police reports, warrant applications and search warrant inventories:
• In each of these two cases, police said a confidential informant made a single, small drug buy at the target house.
• In each case, officers had a no-knock warrant that gave permission to bust down the door.
• In each case, police were looking for a man known only by a nickname who also was not found; last year it was a man named “Black,” last week it was “Sam.”
• And in each case, members of the same narcotics team were involved.
But these aren’t the only cases in which the team served no-knock warrants and came away either empty handed, or with little to show for their effort. Though the legal standard requires police to show special circumstances — that evidence will likely be destroyed or that weapons in the house put officers at risk — these cases and others show that short, routine descriptions and the trust of a judge is all that veteran officers need to obtain such warrants.
The bottom line? It appears to me, from my Fourth Amendment litigator perspective, that these guys are not very well trained, thus proving Justice Scalia and the other four in the majority wrong in Hudson v. Michigan, 126 S. Ct. 2159, 2168 (June 15, 2006):
Another development over the past half-century that deters civil-rights violations is the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline. Even as long ago as 1980 we felt it proper to “assume” that unlawful police behavior would “be dealt with appropriately” by the authorities, United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 733-734, n. 5, 100 S. Ct. 2439, 65 L. Ed. 2d 468 (1980), but we now have increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously. There have been “wide-ranging reforms in the education, training, and supervision of police officers.” S. Walker, Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice 1950-1990, p 51 (1993). Numerous sources are now available to teach officers and their supervisors what is required of them under this Court’s cases, how to respect constitutional guarantees in various situations, and how to craft an effective regime for internal discipline. See, e.g., D. Waksman & D. Goodman, The Search and Seizure Handbook (2d ed. 2006); A. Stone & S. DeLuca, Police Administration: An Introduction (2d ed. 1994); E. Thibault, L. Lynch, & R. McBridge, Proactive Police Management (4th ed. 1998). Failure to teach and enforce constitutional requirements exposes municipalities to financial liability. See Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388, 109 S. Ct. 1197, 103 L. Ed. 2d 412 (1989). Moreover, modern police forces are staffed with professionals; it is not credible to assert that internal discipline, which can limit successful careers, will not have a deterrent effect. There is also evidence that the increasing use of various forms of citizen review can enhance police accountability.
The moral to the story? When the defense proffers a reason for something in the Supreme Court, it is dismissed as unfounded, but, when the government proposes something, citing a book but without evidence in the record, the Supreme Court will seize on it and make it law. Indeed, Justice Scalia wrote that it assumes that “civil liability is an effective deterrent here.” Hudson, 126 S.Ct. at 2167-68.
They do not have a clue.
