CBA Record July-August 2022

YOUNG L AWYERS S EC T I ON : BU I LD I NG BR I DGE S

No-KnockWarrants: Past, Present, and Future By Sarah Chowdhury, Nicholas Flores, and Kenneth Matuszewski

I n general, the knock-and-announce rule requires that officials serving a search warrant must knock and announce their presence and identity prior to enter ing private property. This rule is designed to protect civilians from unreasonable searches and law enforcement from fearful, armed homeowners. No-knock search warrants, in contrast, allow police to enter private property without knocking or ringing a doorbell. Usually, they are issued when police rea sonably suspect that announcing them selves risks evidence destruction or increases danger to themselves. This article provides a historical per spective of no-knock warrants, reviews current measures, and offers a rationale in favor of their ban. Past Policy Failures Federal no-knock warrants were first codified under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse, Prevention, and Control Act of 1970 to enforce anti-drug laws and to prevent evidence destruction. How ever, local, state, and federal police often conducted mistaken, violent, and ille gal raids searching for drugs and drug

when at least 94 people died, includ ing 13 law enforcement officers. Yet the true number is likely higher because until 2014, no state required police agen cies to report forced entries into private residences. By definition, non-manda tory reports for violent forced entries creates an underreporting problem for botched raids. As of May 2021, only Utah, Illinois, and Minnesota required these forced-entry reports. Federal agen cies also do not track how many people die – or receive injuries – from raids. Third, no-knock warrants dispropor tionately endanger minority communities. As of 2014, 68% of all drug raids involv ing SWAT teams were executed in com munities of color, including 42% within Black communities, 12% within Latinx communities, and 14% within other minority communities. These numbers are disproportional because, as of 2020, around 58%of people in the United States were White, non-Hispanic, or non-Latino. Fourth, no-knock raids are financially harmful and cause property damage to taxpayers. Data suggests that police damage doors and windows with rams

dealers. At the federal level, no-knock warrants proved so ineffective and dis ruptive that Congress banned them in 1974–merely four years after they were codified into law. Unfortunately, state and local police still use no-knock warrants. No-knock warrants do not advance their intended purposes for four reasons. First, by sanctioning dynamic entry tactics, such warrants undercut the touchstone constitutional principle that people are presumed innocent. When executing no knock warrants, police disorient sleeping occupants with battering rams and explo sives before swarming inside. No-knock warrants uniquely harm innocent people because they are issued indiscriminately, and they prevent innocent occupants from informing the police beforehand that the search is being executed at the wrong home. This, in turn, goes against the Fourth Amendment’s purpose. Second, no-knock warrants endanger civilians and police because they often result in violent confrontations. From the late 1980s until 2006, at least 40 people died in botched raids. This number more than doubled between 2010 and 2016,

CBA RECORD 43