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Stories filed under: "no knock warrants"

Mississippi Courts Are Helping Cops Keep Search Warrants Out Of The Public’s Hands

from the much-despised-no-look-warrants dept

No-knock warrants remain under fire as they continue to needlessly increase the death toll of residents who often have no idea who’s violently entering their home and, therefore, respond in unpredictable ways. Supposedly obtained to increase officer safety, these warrants often seem like a handy way to put officers in “fear for your safety” mode, thus justifying the violence that follows.

But how often are they obtained? That’s tough to tell. Very few law enforcement agencies are willing to speak openly about their use/abuse of these warrants. Fortunately, public records and court proceedings will often provide the information cop shops and prosecutors won’t share freely.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Warrants and affidavits are part of the court record in criminal proceedings. Warrants and their accompanying paperwork are often sealed by court orders, preventing the public from seeing them until the government (judge, law enforcement agency, etc.) feels comfortable sharing them.

In Mississippi, however, the status quo is even worse than the hit-and-miss warrant access available elsewhere in the country. This ProPublica report shines a light on the seemingly concerted effort to keep warrant documents out of the public’s hands across the state. (via FourthAmendment.com)

The opening details the struggles of public defender Merrill Nordstrom, who was simply trying to challenge the warrant (which happened to be no-knock) that had led to her client’s arrest. Police had violently entered her client’s home searching for drugs — an assault predicated by the alleged sale of less than a gram of marijuana to an informant. No drugs were found but cops came across a gun her client wasn’t allowed to own.

Hoping to find warrants showing a pattern of violent no-knock raids predicated on alleged criminal acts that seemingly would not require this show of force, she went to the Greenville courthouse to read through other warrants. That’s when she discovered the court did not keep these records. Perversely, the local justice system was lending itself to injustice.

Though she had the search warrant for Bryant’s home, she couldn’t find records for most other raids in the city. The search warrants and supporting documents weren’t at the courthouse, even though the state Supreme Court’s rules require law enforcement to return warrants to the court.

Instead they were at the Greenville Police Department, hidden from view because law enforcement agencies, unlike the courts, can claim a broad public records exemption over records in their possession.

Wow. It’s as if no one in the Greenville courthouse is aware files can be copied, either physically or digitally. The police have no right to stash away the sole copies of search warrants in their own files, especially when it appears the sole purpose is to invert the presumption of openness that guides court proceedings.

It’s a statewide problem.

An investigation by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal and ProPublica has found that almost two-thirds of Mississippi’s county-level justice courts prevent access to some or all search warrants and related documents. So do municipal courts in at least five of the state’s 10 largest cities, including Jackson, the capital.

The court-enabled opacity takes multiple forms. Some courts violate state law by not requiring law enforcement to turn in search warrants and other documents once the warrants have been served. In some cases, courts don’t even bother having cops do the dirty work. They simply refuse to give the public access to these documents.

It’s this opacity that encourages abuse of no-knock warrants. The public defender discussed above discovered a majority of warrants issued in Greenville were no-knock. And most were likely approved by Municipal Judge Michael Prewitt, the only circuit judge in the area for the last two decades. Judge Prewitt admitted as much when questioned by the defender, stating that he’d issue a no-knock warrant to “search for a sweater.” His excuse? There’s a lot of drug crime in Greenville.

This information came from the judge himself. The court claimed it had no records of any searches authorized by Judge Prewitt, despite his two decades of service. And it didn’t. The only person with access to the documents was the person who rubber-stamped them to send cops searching for sweaters.

Prewitt said in an email to the Daily Journal and ProPublica that he personally keeps copies of all search warrants that are returned to him.

The courts in Mississippi are serving law enforcement, rather than the public. Multiple court clerks were questioned by ProPublica. Far too many admitted they weren’t in the business of assuring public records were accessible by the public.

“We don’t keep those,” said Lamar County Justice Court Clerk Sandra Owen.

“Usually the return goes back to the sheriff’s offices,” said Jones County Justice Court Clerk Stacy Walls.

“I hardly ever see search warrants — before, during or after,” said Marion County Justice Court Clerk Wynette Parkman.

Once again, government employees are conveniently pretending it’s impossible to make a copy of a court document before giving it back to a law enforcement agency. In other cases, they’re simply pretending the rule ordering law enforcement to provide these documents to the court following a search doesn’t apply to them or the cops.

There is some justifiable ignorance tucked into all the law enforcement subservience. In many cases, clerks aren’t made aware that warrants have been signed by judges. As such, there’s no way they would know documents cops are mandated to return to the court have not been returned.

But there’s also a lot of seemingly willful ignorance. Clerks seem to be aware of law enforcement’s obligations. However, they claim that, despite the clear wording, they’ve never been explicitly told these documents must remain in the hands of the court when (or, more likely, if) they’re returned by law enforcement officers.

The entire report is an infuriating read. The general tone that comes across is that both involved government parties — law enforcement and courts — believe the general public has no right to access these documents, despite them clearly being part of the public record, in terms of court proceedings.

Most respondents were at least able to hide their contempt behind shrugs and professed confusion. Some, however, were not.

Even some courts that do have search warrants on hand refused to let the Daily Journal and ProPublica see them.

“I cannot release any public information about search warrants,” said Kemper County Justice Court Clerk Lynn Puckett. “They are not public records and thank you for your call and you have a great day.” With that, she hung up the phone.

Nothing like a court clerk who’s not only wrong about the law but super-shitty about it.

That’s what decades of jurisprudence on the openness of courts has given the public, at least in Mississippi: a bunch of shrugs, middle fingers, and open flouting of court rules by people whose paychecks are signed by the people they’re screwing. Disgusting.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, mississippi, no knock warrants, transparency, warrant

Following Nationwide Police Brutality Protests, DOJ Steps Up To Issue Incremental Updates To Its Chokehold/No-Knock Warrant Policies

from the goodish-news,-everyone! dept

The Department of Justice is the nominal leader of US law enforcement, even if it really only has direct control of federal officers. That being said, it would have been nice to see the DOJ take the lead on law enforcement issues, rather than gently coast into the police reform driveway late in the proverbial night to add itself to the bottom of the list of reform efforts springing up all over the nation in response to, you guessed it, violence committed by police officers.

Chokeholds have been controversial for forever, but even more so in recent years, as police officers across the nation have killed people they were just supposed to be arresting, using techniques most police departments claim (often after the fact) they’ve banned for years. The DOJ has never banned chokeholds previously, and it’s apparently not going to start now.

The new guidance [PDF] doesn’t seem like much of an improvement over the old guidance, which was released more than 17 years ago. The old one said that the DOJ has had a “long-standing policy” that limits use of deadly force to situations where officers have a “reasonable belief” the arrestee “poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.” This is the same standard that governs almost all use of force by officers all over the nation and it really hasn’t stopped them from deploying deadly force unreasonably in situations that could have benefitted from de-escalation and restraint.

The revamped guidance doesn’t change much, if anything, about the threat calculus officers must perform before deciding to kill someone by choking them to death.

Given the inherent dangerousness of chokeholds and carotid restraints, and based on feedback from our law enforcement components on these techniques, Department law enforcement agents and correctional officers are hereby prohibited from using a chokehold or a carotid restraint unless that standard of necessity for use of deadly force is satisfied. Accordingly, Department law enforcement components will revise their policies to reflect this guidance prohibiting the use of chokeholds or carotid restraints by Department law enforcement agents and correctional officers, including federal task force officers, unless deadly force is authorized.

It’s unclear how deadly force will be “authorized” in mid-arrest, but those are the new rules, which will be buttressed by that old law enforcement standby that’s done almost nothing to eliminate excessive force deployments: additional training.

The DOJ also has thoughts about no-knock warrants. These have been portrayed as a necessary abridgement of knock-and-announce warrant service protocol that is supposed to prevent targets from escaping, evidence from being destroyed, and, most importantly, officers from being killed. In practice, however, no-knock warrants have needlessly escalated violence during warrant service, giving officers the excuse they need to greet anything unexpected (and it’s all unexpected when you go crashing through someone’s door) with a hail of bullets. It also provokes residents to open fire on officers, often mistaking them for criminals attempting to break into their homes.

The DOJ’s new guidance basically reiterates what it has always said: that federal officers need compelling reasons to seek no-knock warrants. But the reasons aren’t all that compelling, seeing as they’re the standard reasons plenty of cops have boilerplated into warrant requests along with claims about danger to officers or evidence destruction no court can possibly verify. In most cases, their requests are approved and officers head off to engage in literal death and destruction with the nominal blessing of whatever magistrate the affidavit was handed to.

Here are the new stipulations the DOJ imaginatively calls “limits.”

First, an agent may seek judicial authorization to conduct a “no knock” entry only if that agent has reasonable grounds to believe at the time the warrant is sought that knocking and announcing the agent’ s presence would create an imminent threat of physical violence to the agent and/or another person. Prior to seeking judicial authorization for a “no knock” entry, an agent must first obtain approval from both the Criminal Chief Of The relevant U.S. Attorney’s Office (or a Deputy Chief in a Main Justice litigating component) and an Assistant Special Agent in Charge or Chief Deputy Marshal in the district. Once judicial authorization is obtained, agents may proceed without “knocking and announcing” their presence unless they learn of facts that negate the circumstances that justified this exception to the “knock and announce” rule.

There are a couple of good things in here, despite the expected deference to officers and their “reasonable grounds to believe.” The fact that officers must now seek internal approval before passing on the boilerplate to a magistrate judge might deter officers from compiling deficient affidavits or think twice about not portraying normal warrant service as the federal cop equivalent of rushing the trenches. And it’s nice touch that federal cops are asked to dial back the no-knock bum rush if information comes to light indicating the planned warrant service won’t be as threatening as previously believed, but it’s hard to believe any officer is going to switch back to knock-and-announce when they already have judicial (and supervisory) permission to go in guns blazing.

The new policy also gives officers an opportunity to bypass internal controls and judicial permission.

Second, if an agent did not anticipate the need for a “no knock” entry at the time the warrant was sought, the agent may conduct a “no knock” entry only if exigent circumstances arise at the scene such that knocking and announcing the agent’s presence would create an imminent threat of physical violence to the agent and/or another person.

So, if federal officers don’t get the warrant they want, they can change it on the fly. The DOJ only asks that they justify the switcheroo after the fact by speaking to higher-ups like the Special Agent in Charge and provide written notice of the at-the-doorstep-audible to the US Attorney’s office and/or “relevant Assistant Attorney General.”

Here’s the better policy change: no-knocks are for officer safety only. No more setting toddlers on fire just because officers think someone inside might be trying to flush a few kilos down the toilet.

Because this policy limits “no knock” entries to instances where there is an imminent threat of physical violence, it is narrower than what is permitted by law – for example, agents must “knock and announce” even when they have reason to believe that doing so could result in the destruction of evidence. In setting the policy this way, the Department is limiting the use of higher-risk “no knock” entries to only those instances where physical safety is at stake at the time of entry.

There is an exception, of course. And for the stupidest, laziest, most predictable reason.

Should an exceptional circumstance arise (e.g., in a national security matter) where no imminent threat of physical violence is present but an agent believes the evidence is so significant, and the risk of its destruction so pronounced, that a “no knock” entry is warranted, judicial authorization for a “no knock” warrant can be sought…

There’s a better caveat attached to that. This exception would have to be pre-approved by the US Attorney’s office, so it doesn’t fall under the exigent circumstances exception listed above.

The good news is the DOJ is thinking about these issues and attempting to address them. The bad news is this barely addresses anything. At best, it prevents federal officers from engaging in violent raids of people’s homes solely because they think some evidence might be destroyed. At worst, the changes are so incremental officers arriving via time machine from George W. Bush’s first term wouldn’t feel particularly out of place. If this is the example the DOJ is setting for local law enforcement agencies around the nation, they’ll be more than happy to go back to (deadly) business as usual.

Filed Under: chokeholds, doj, guidance, no knock warrants, police, police brutality

Police Union Sues Kentucky City's Mayor, Claiming New No-Knock Warrant Ban Violates Its Bargaining Agreement

from the working-tirelessly-to-be-as-wrong-as-possible dept

The city of Lexington, Kentucky recently passed a ban on no-knock raids by the local police department. A long string of no-knock raids that have ended tragically likely contributed to this, but a recent high-profile raid in which a 26-year-old black ER technician was shot and killed by Louisville, Kentucky police officers probably hit closest to home.

In that raid, officers did not announce their presence. Bursting into the house, they were met by gunfire from one of the house’s residents who thought he was being robbed. (He had called 911 prior to arming himself.) While the officers did knock, they apparently did not declare they were police officers before breaking down the door. The officers returned fire, killing Breonna Taylor. The entire thing was predicated on an drug investigation that appeared to be at least partially fabricated.

Lexington has its own experience with botched drug raids. A no-knock raid in 2015 terrorized the residents of the wrong house, most of whom thought they were being robbed. It wasn’t until the residents were surrounded by officers pointing guns that the officers realized they had the wrong address. The push to end no-knock raids began then, prompting opposition from law enforcement.

Lexington police insist that no-knock warrants — that allow police to enter a residence without knocking or announcing — are used sparingly and are thoroughly vetted before they are carried out. Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said in a June presentation before the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council that no-knock warrants had been used four times in the last five years.

That’s according to the police department, which did not release any documents that might have confirmed the chief’s claims about the limited use of these raids. Following several months of anti-police violence protests — along with more recent tragedies linked to no-knock raids, the city passed a ban on this form of warrant service. The new city ordinance mandates that police knock, announce their presence, and wait a “reasonable” amount of time before forcing entry.

Now the city and the mayor are being sued by the local police union.

The Fraternal Order of Police has filed a lawsuit against the mayor and the city over the recently passed no-knock warrant ban.

It was last Thursday when the city council approved the ban in a 10 to 5 vote. The lawsuit claims that the city violated its collective bargaining agreement with the FOP.

So, what is the legal footing the FOP hopes will overturn this ban? It’s a very creative reading of the city’s agreement with the police union. According to bylaws the city and PD agreed to, the PD is obliged to keep officers as safe as possible. After spending some time bitching about how city reps made no effort to “negotiate” with the union, it finally gets around to laying down its ridiculous argument [PDF]. Here it is:

Article 14, Section I of the Officer/Sergeant CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement] stipulates, “The Department will take precautions to safeguard the health and safety of Members during their hours of work and maintain standards of safety and sanitation.”

[…]

The No-Knock Ordinance seriously endangers the health and safety of LPD Officers.

The No-Knock Ordinance prohibits LPD officers from seeking a lawful no-knock warrant, even when they objectively establish probable cause that requiring law enforcement to knock and announce their presence would increase the danger to the officers involved in executing the warrant.

The No-Knock Ordinance creates an extrajudicial “knock and announce” policy for all arrest and search warrants, devoid of any “precautions to safeguard the health and safety of [LPD Officers].”

It’s not much of an argument. First, let’s look at the police chief’s statement. If the PD is only using these warrants about once a year, the loss of this one opportunity to surprise occupants isn’t going to significantly increase the risk to officers.

If the chief was being dishonest about the frequency of no-knock warrant deployment, there’s literally no evidence available anywhere that shows no-knock warrants are safer (for occupants, officers, or the general public) than regular knock-and-announce warrants.

No studies have examined the impact of banning no-knock warrants on key outcomes such as reducing fatalities and injuries of officers and members of the public. But evaluations of the impact of police raids, which typically involve no-knock warrants, on crime include two rigorous experiments. One study assessed the impact of randomly assigning city blocks in Kansas City, MO, to receive forcible police raids involving dramatic, highly visible armed entry while other blocks were subject to routine policing practices. Researchers found no statistically significant impacts on violent crime. Another study assessed the impact of randomized deployment of police paramilitary units to raid known Buffalo, NY, drug houses over a two-week period in 2012. Evaluators detected slight increases in calls for service and drug arrests following the raids, but no significant impacts on serious violent or property crimes.

A third evaluation employed a less rigorous methodology, examining 9,000 law enforcement agencies along with all of those in Maryland to compare outcomes in crime and officer assaults between agencies that established or eliminated a SWAT team during a period of time in the 2000s. The study found no statistically significant impact of SWAT deployment on either crime or officer assaults.

That comes from the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), whose membership includes several current and former police officials. It is not a font of anti-police activism. And it recommends ending the use of no-knock warrants and the use of plainclothes officers and/or the use of military uniforms during warrant service… to increase officer safety.

Unless they are engaged in covert operations, officers should be in standard dress uniform when executing warrants, particularly at premises that are known to be occupied, in order to be clearly identifiable as law enforcement and remove the impression that the execution of search warrants is a burglary (in the case of plainclothes officers) or military exercise (in the case of officers wearing battle uniforms). This practice minimizes the potential for officer harm from occupants using deadly force against assumed intruders. When a threat assessment determines that it is appropriate for a SWAT team to execute the warrant, those suitably attired and equipped officers should execute the warrant.

There’s nothing out there showing ending no-knock raids would make officers less safe. It certainly would make the residents of houses raided safer. Many of those inside houses being raided are suspected of no criminal activity. This includes children who just happen to live in homes targeted (sometimes mistakenly) by officers who appear to believe catching kids in the crossfire is just acceptable collateral damage in the War on Drugs.

According to a New York Times study, no-knock raids involving SWAT-style tactics have led to the deaths of at least 100 people since 2010. Some of these are deaths of children, like seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in Detroit who was shot in the head by police during a SWAT raid while she was sleeping next to her grandmother

[…]

Reports of botched raids show that no-knock warrants are used for an array of activities that simply do not justify the level of intrusion and inherent risk involved. Indeed, they have been deployed on high school students, in simple drug possession cases, and even for unpaid utility bills.

When the FOP argues in favor of no-knock raids, it’s arguing for continuing the escalating trend of police violence.

There has been more than a 1,400% increase in the total number of police paramilitary deployments, or callouts, between 1980 and 2000. Today, an estimated 45,000 SWAT-team deployments are conducted yearly among those departments surveyed; in the early 1980s there was an average of about 3,000 (Kraska, 2001). The trend-line demonstrated that this growth began during the drug war of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The city’s ordinance is trying to slow that roll. And it should make officers safer, whether they believe it will or not. Just because everyone calls it the “war on drugs” doesn’t mean PDs should erect paramilitary forces that treat regular warrant service like an assault on enemy territory. The FOP is suing because the cops its represents love the violence, the culture, and the opportunity to feel like they’re fighting a battle, rather than serving and protecting. Hopefully the court will point out that the city has the power to impose rules like this that do not directly violate the bylaws of the bargaining agreement.

Filed Under: kentucky, lexington, lexington police department, no knock warrants, police union

John Oliver On Drug Raids: Why Are We Raiding Houses For Drug Quantities That Could Be Easily Flushed Down A Toilet?

from the law-enforcement-vastly-overestimating-toilet-capacity dept

John Oliver has demolished many institutions in his time (not literally, unfortunately, in most cases) as the host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight. It’s rare when a mainstream program chooses to address more esoteric matters often discussed at this website. But Oliver does it more than most and, for that, we truly appreciate him.

His episode from last week dealt with drug raids. Our nation’s drug warriors have decided any suspicion of non-violent crime should be met with an uber-violent response, possibly because they’ve watched just as many Hollywood movies as we have.

When it comes to drugs and drug warrants, it’s all hands on deck. Sometimes, law enforcement agencies are able to obtain no-knock warrants, which allow them to enter a residence without announcing their presence in order to “preserve evidence” and limit the possibility of a violent response.

Let’s handle the second thing first. There’s a lot of evidence that suggests no-knock raids increase the possibility of a violent response because the first assumption a drug dealer might make is that a rival drug dealer/gang is raiding their house to end their lives, take their drugs, and grab a bit more profitable turf. Cops get killed. People get killed.

Now, let’s talk about the possibility of evidence being destroyed. We’re talking about large amounts of drugs, paraphernalia, and weapons. As John Oliver points out, this is bullshit. Cops are raiding homes without announcing themselves to secure extremely minute amounts of evidence. And that’s according to their own justifications:

Yeah, the ruling there was giving you 20 seconds to answer your door is reasonable because you might flush evidence down the toilet, which raises the obvious question here: why the f*ck are we raiding people’s homes for an amount of evidence that can be flushed down a toilet?

As someone who has had to unclog toilets multiple times over my 46 years of living (but mostly over my 30 years of being a parent) (I had my first child at 30), the amount of anything it takes to clog a toilet is far less than any amount of anything that would seem to justify a guns-out raid of a premises. And considering the catch-all charge for most raids — especially when no one can find the drugs officers thought they’d find — is illegal possession of a weapon by a felon, there’s absolutely zero chance anyone’s going to be able to flush a gun down a toilet. That’s just impossible.

Surrounding a house and providing residents a chance to answer — rather than destroying doors, windows, nearby toddlers… — is going to keep most evidence intact. A toilet can only do so much. A surrounded residence will prevent suspects and evidence from being ejected into neighboring yards. Everything else will still remain in place, especially when suspects realize Hollywood has been lying to them about the flushability of large quantities of drugs.

In any event, treating every standard drug warrant service as paramilitary assault on a violent enemy results in — you guessed it — violence. People are killed and wounded. Officers are killed and wounded. And this happens whether or not cops hit the right address. In far too many cases, they don’t. That’s something we won’t put up with from the USPS, Amazon, or anyone else we entrust to get our address correct. When cops don’t, officials just respond with ¯_(?)_/¯. This should be a tragedy and result in a few firings. Instead, it’s just the cost of the Drug War — paid by people who weren’t even combatants.

The police hitting the wrong address is completely unacceptable when the stakes are so high. Even Edible Arrangements manages to deliver to the correct address!

When the stakes are life and death, mere competence shouldn’t be considered an unreasonable bar for officers to reach. It should be the minimum we expect of them. But it isn’t. And cops continue to get more violent despite the Drug War being a multi-decade failure and their escalating efforts having resulted in little more than a long, uninterrupted string of rights violations and deaths. This is unacceptable. And yet, it is not only considered acceptable, but valorous. Hopefully, John Oliver’s reach will make more people aware of the injustices carried out with their implicit blessing and prompt further meaningful change in drug policies and law enforcement agencies.

Filed Under: drug raids, john oliver, no knock warrants, police, police brutality

Virginia Governor Passes A Long List Of Police Reforms, Including A Ban On No-Knock Warrants

from the just-forty-nine-states-to-go dept

They’re not screwing around with police reform in Virginia. Plenty of states and cities are reevaluating the way law enforcement money is spent and how agencies operate following nationwide protests against police brutality, but few of these discussions have resulted in solid changes. There’s been more discussion than action. Virginia’s governor is all about action, it would appear. As NBC12 reports, a long list of reforms has been signed into law by Governor Ralph Northam.

Governor Northam has been working closely with legislators on these measures since early summer after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked unrest.

“Too many families, in Virginia and across our nation, live in fear of being hurt or killed by police,” Governor Northam said. “These new laws represent a tremendous step forward in rebuilding trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. I am grateful to the legislators and advocates who have worked so hard to make this change happen. Virginia is better, more just, and more equitable with these laws on our books.”

The entire list of signed bills can be viewed here, most of which deal with law enforcement issues. Much of what’s included here is surprising — not because it’s groundbreaking, but because it simply didn’t exist before now. It’s hard to believe it’s 2020 and we’re just now getting around to doing things like mandating background checks for law enforcement hires and making it a felony for law enforcement officers to engage in sexual relationships with arrestees and inmates.

But there are plenty of other positive changes — many of which aren’t in place elsewhere in the county. With these passages, Virginia becomes only the third state in the nation to ban no-knock warrants. Another passed bill severely restricts what agencies can obtain through the Defense Department’s 1033 program, forbidding the acquisition of high caliber firearms and weaponized aircraft. (To be fair, no law enforcement agency has ever acquired a “weaponized aircraft,” and it seems unlikely the DoD would approve the transfer of one to local cop shops.)

Also newly enacted are training mandates for new law enforcement officers, including de-escalation techniques and bias awareness. Bad cops will no longer be as shielded from accountability, thanks to changes to the decertification process. The state’s Criminal Justice Services Board — which will now include more diverse viewpoints — has been granted the power to initiate decertification proceedings, something law enforcement agencies seem very hesitant to do themselves.

This will also trickle down to the local level. Cities and towns are now permitted to form their own civilian review boards. And they won’t be completely toothless. They’ll be given the power to issue subpoenas and, more importantly, make binding disciplinary decisions that can’t be overridden by local law enforcement officials. The state’s Attorney General can now initiate lawsuits and pattern/practice investigations into the state’s law enforcement agencies, something it apparently was unable to do previously.

Again, while many of these reforms are welcome and necessary, the depressing flipside is that all of this wasn’t in place prior to this year. Law enforcement agencies in Virginia (and around the nation) have spent decades operating with minimal oversight. The end result is the mess we’ve seen everywhere. Years of zero accountability haven’t given us better cops or better community relationships. It’s given us barrels of apples rotting from inside. Things are slowly starting to turn around. Unfortunately, it’s taken thousands of deaths, billions of dollars in lawsuit settlements, and several months of uninterrupted protests to make legislators understand they can no longer maintain the status quo.

Filed Under: 1033 program, criminal justice, no knock warrants, ralph northam, virginia

South Carolina Supreme Court Says Cops Aren't Getting Any No-Knock Warrants Anytime Soon

from the no-knock,-no-warrant dept

Earlier this year, Louisville (KY) police officers killed an unarmed woman during a no-knock drug raid. Breonna Taylor was killed after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, opened fire on SWAT officers Walker believed were criminals entering their home. The officers claimed they had announced their presence before entering. A 911 call placed by Walker — a licensed gun owner — indicated no warning had been given.

“I don’t know what happened … somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend…”

This completely preventable tragedy again prompted discussions of no-knock warrants and their use by law enforcement. This latest killing continued the long narrative of violent actions by drug task forces, who supposedly avail themselves of no-knock raids to increase the safety of officers and occupants. But all no-knock raids seem to do is increase the chance officers will provoke a violent reaction they can use to justify the killing of anyone on the premises. The raid that killed Breonna Taylor was a complete failure. The suspect being sought wasn’t in the house and no drugs were found.

A few small reform efforts targeting the use of no-knock warrants have been made. The Houston Police Department had no choice but to rewrite its rules after a no-knock raid ended with two citizens dead, five officers wounded, and two of those officers hit with multiple criminal charges.

A judge in South Carolina has taken it upon himself to step up and address the huge problem local law enforcement apparently isn’t quite ready to confront.

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Beatty late Friday afternoon ordered state judges and magistrates to stop issuing “no-knock” search warrants to police.

[…]

Beatty’s order said that the majority of state search warrants in South Carolina are issued by magistrates, the lowest rank of judicial authority. But a recent survey, Beatty wrote, revealed that “most (magistrates) do not understand the gravity of no-knock warrants and do not discern the heightened requirements for issuing a no-knock warrant.”

It’s not a ban. It’s a moratorium. But it should decrease the chances someone in South Carolina will be needlessly killed by overzealous drug warriors. The short order issued by Judge Beatty says no no-knocks warrants will be approved until there are some clear ground rules in place.

IT IS ORDERED that a moratorium upon the issuance of no-knock warrants by all circuit and summary court judges of this state take effect immediately and remain in effect until instruction is provided to circuit and summary court judges statewide as to the criteria to be used to determine whether a requested no-knock warrant should be issued. This instruction will be provided by the South Carolina Judicial Branch.

It also points out that judges have been handling these requests carelessly. And this carelessness is killing people.

It further appears that no-knock search warrants are routinely issued upon request without further inquiry. In recognition of the dangers that the execution of no-knock warrants present to law enforcement and members of the public, and in order to ensure that these warrants are issued based upon the proper constitutional and statutory criteria,

I FIND it necessary to address the issuance of no-knock search warrants by circuit and summary court judges statewide.

It has been addressed. No-knocks are no-go in South Carolina until further notice. Cops will just have to do warrant service the old fashioned way — one that appears to be far less dangerous than the supposedly “safer” option.

Filed Under: donald beatty, no knock warrants, south carolina

Arkansas Police Department Has Been Engaging In Illegal Drug Raids For Years

from the bogus-narratives-and-boilerplate dept

The War on Drugs seems to bring out the worst in law enforcement. Wiretap abuse, asset forfeiture, flashbang grenades tossed into toddlers’ cribs, internal corruption… these are all aspects of law enforcement’s drug-related police work.

Radley Balko has uncovered more abuse and Constitutional violations, this time stemming from the Little Rock PD’s anti-drug efforts. The wrongs detailed in Balko’s investigation include false statements on warrant requests, abuse of no-knock warrants, “reliable” confidential informants who are anything but reliable, and a handful of destroyed lives left in its wake.

It opens with the story of Roderick Talley, whose apartment was raided by a Little Rock (AR) SWAT team. The team used explosives to remove his door, sending it flying onto the couch where Talley was sleeping. The raid was predicated on an informant’s supposed controlled buy. But Talley’s own security cameras — which also captured the raid itself — showed the informant didn’t do what police said he did.

The outside camera had recorded two odd incidents. First, a man whom Talley didn’t know approached the apartment while Talley wasn’t home. Looking anxious, the man knocked, waited a few moments and then left. A few days later, the camera picked up a police officer outside the door. The officer looked around, snapped a photo of Talley’s door with his cellphone, and left.

According to the search warrant affidavit, the CI had purchased drugs from Talley, with the swearing officer claiming he had actually witnessed this (nonexistent) purchase take place.

The detective wrote that he and two other detectives then watched as the informant approached Talley’s apartment. Importantly, the detective wrote that the officers “observed the door open” and witnessed the informant have “a conversation with someone inside the apartment.” Immediately after, they met up with the informant at a prearranged location. The informant said he had just purchased $100 worth of cocaine from two men in the apartment. One man took his money at the door, then an inside man handed the door man a small bag of cocaine.

If it hadn’t been for his own cameras, it would have been Talley’s word against the Little Rock PD’s. The only drugs found during the no-knock raid was a misdemeanor amount of marijuana. Talley was then kicked out of his apartment by his landlord and billed for the damages caused by the SWAT team.

Talley isn’t alone. Balko details a couple of other questionable raids that can be traced back to the same questionable informant.

Talley says the informant did speak to him, and when he confronted him about his own case, the informant admitted that he never bought cocaine that day. Furthermore, “his girlfriend told me that he’d get paid for each bust, so he’d just take the cops to the places of people he knew or had heard about, knock on the door, and then he’d just make small talk for a few minutes,” Talley says. “Then he’d go tell the cops that he’d bought whatever drug they were looking for.”

That jibes with the accounts of two other people who say they were recently raided because of the informant. Derrick Davis says that on Sept. 2, 2017, a few weeks after the raid on Talley, a strange man knocked on his door. “I’d never seen the guy before,” Davis says. “He just comes up, knocks and walks right in. Then he starts asking weird questions about my apartment, like whether I like living there, and how much the rent is. He stayed for a few minutes, then he thanked me and left. It was weird.”

Two weeks later, an LRPD raid team blew down Davis’s door. “I saw the video of what they did to Mr. Talley. It was exactly what they did to me,” he says. “They used explosives. It blew the door clean off. Then about 10 guys came in, all decked out in SWAT gear.”

What’s most concerning about the LRPD’s tactics is its reliance on “no knock” warrants. These warrants are supposed to be limited to cases where officers can demonstrate a sufficient need to enter a private residence unannounced. There’s a higher bar than regular search warrants and are meant to the rare exception to the rule. For the Little Rock PD, the exception is the rule.

Of the 105 warrants, LRPD officers requested a no-knock raid in 103. Of those 103, Little Rock’s criminal court judges granted the request in at least 101. (The other two search warrants were missing the page that included the judge’s instructions on how the warrant should be served.)

The”neutral magistrate” — the check against government power — was, in these cases, the rubber stamp applied to PD boilerplate. Only eight warrant requests contained any specific details about the sought suspect. The other 90+ warrant requests were copy-pasted assertions about drug dealers and danger. As Balko points out, this isn’t just lazy police work (and lazy adjudicating), it’s actually illegal.

Some police agencies adapted to the Wilson ruling [on no-knock warrants] by simply deciding that all drug cases involve violent suspects and easily destroyable evidence. The Supreme Court rejected this approach two years later in the 1997 case Richards v. Wisconsin. The court ruled that to obtain a no-knock warrant, law enforcement officers must demonstrate specific exigent circumstances for each suspect for whom they’re trying to obtain a no-knock warrant. They can’t simply state that an entire class of crimes, such as drug crimes, presents de facto exigent circumstances.

The Little Rock PD has been engaged in unconstitutional policing for who knows how many years. It just took a set of personal security cameras to catch them in the act. The resulting paper trail has exposed an assembly line for illegal SWAT raids and it’s unlikely this Arkansas law enforcement agency is the only one in the nation using the War on Drugs as an excuse for violent behavior and rights violations.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, arkansas, confidential informants, little rock, little rock police department, no knock warrants, roderick talley, swat, war on drugs, warrants

South Carolina Drug Warriors Routinely Serving Regular Warrants Like No-Knock Warrants

from the not-constitutional-and-a-whole-lot-more-dangerous-for-everyone-involved dept

Radley Balko is uncovering more rights violations and more law enforcement falsehoods with his coverage of South Carolina resident Julian Betton’s lawsuit against the Myrtle Beach-area drug task force. Betton’s house was raided by the drug unit after a confidential informant made two pot purchases for a total of $100. The police didn’t have a no-knock warrant, but they acted like they did, going from zero to hail-of-gunfire in mere seconds. (via FourthAmendment.com)

On April 16, 2015, the task force battered Betton’s door open with a ram, then almost immediately opened fire, releasing at least 29 bullets, nine of which hit Betton. One bullet pierced a back wall in the building, sped across a nearby basketball court and landed in the wall of another house. (This was a multi-family building.)

Betton was hit several times. He didn’t die, but he doesn’t have much left in working order. He lost part of his gallbladder, colon, and rectum. His liver, pancreas and small intestine all suffered damage. His left leg was broken along with one of his vertebrae.

The cops immediately set about justifying their extreme tactics. First, they claimed Betton fired at them, but ballistics tests showed Betton’s gun hadn’t been fired. Then they claimed he pointed a gun at them, but did not fire it. This could have easily been proven if any of the task force had bothered to activate their body cameras before breaking Betton’s door down. But the footage shows no cameras were activated until after the task force stopped firing.

The task force used a regular search warrant, meaning the officers were supposed to knock and announce their presence. Nearly all of them said they followed these stipulations. Video from Betton’s home security camera (which can be seen at the Washington Post) caught all these officers in a lie.

These 11 seconds of footage from that camera show that no member of the task force knocked on Betton’s door.

The video lacks audio, but both the Myrtle Beach police chief and a federal magistrate have since concluded that the video also strongly suggests there was no announcement. None of the officers’ lips appear to be moving, and it all happens very quickly. At best, they announced themselves simultaneously or nearly simultaneously, with the battering ram hitting the door.

A neighbor who was on Betton’s sidewalk (and was told to lie on the ground by the task force on their way to Betton’s door) backs up the camera footage. No announcement was made before the door was breached.

This is apparently standard operating procedure in Myrtle Beach. Only in rare cases does the task force seek no-knock warrants. (Task force officials say no-knocks are only “1-2%” of warrants obtained.) But they apparently serve plenty of normal warrants without knocking or announcing their presence.

It seems clear from the testimony in depositions that the 15th Circuit Drug Enforcement Unit doesn’t know any of this. Officer Christopher Dennis, for example, said that the “reasonable” waiting period for someone to answer the door begins the moment police arrive on the scene, not after they knock and announce themselves. This is false. Officer Chad Guess — who, remember, planned the Betton raid — said in a deposition that it’s “not the law to knock and announce. You know, it’s just not. It’s the officer’s discretion, each dictate determines itself.” This, again, is wrong. Officer Belue said under oath that he had no idea how long officers are supposed to wait before forcing entry, and that no one had trained him on the matter.

It’s a convenient misunderstanding of the law. It’s made even more convenient by the task force’s lack of clearly-written policies on serving warrants. Since everyone of the task force remains as ignorant as possible, they’re more likely to be granted immunity when victims of unconstitutional drug raids take them to court.

But these officers may not get off so lightly. Their reports and testimony have been disproven by the 11 seconds of video captured by Betton’s security camera. Officers who swore they knocked and announced their presence now have to explain how those both occurred with zero officers knocking on Betton’s door or even moving their lips.

More lies can be found elsewhere in the report. Officers stated in police reports they heard the sound of Betton’s gun firing. Ballistics testing has shown Betton never fired his handgun, so everyone making that same claim about gunfire is either mistaken about what they heard or, more likely, aligning themselves with the narrative they created in the aftermath of the shooting.

Maybe these officers are hoping their professional ignorance will outweigh their bogus reports. The task force has made it incredibly easy for members to write their own rules when executing warrants. As Balko points, the single most invasive and dangerous thing the task force participates in (~150 times a year) — warrant service — has zero official policies dictating how task force members serve warrants. Apparently, all that time and effort went into creating a cool skull-and-crossbones logo for members to stitch on their not-very-coplike raid gear.

In any event, the court system is the last stop for justice. If any of these officers are ever going to be held accountable for their actions in the Betton raid, it will be here. Every level of oversight task force members answer to has already offered their official blessings for the knock-and-announce warrant that was carried out without knocks or announcements.

What happened to Julian Betton is an entirely predictable product of the failures, culture and mindset of the 15th Circuit Drug Enforcement Unit. And yet to date, state officials won’t even concede that this was a bad outcome, much less do anything to prevent it from happening again. Citing the SLED investigation, South Carolina solicitor Kevin Bracket cleared the officers of any wrongdoing within just a few months. In the three years since the raid, no officer involved has been disciplined, even internally. Nor has any officer has been asked to undergo additional training. No policies have been changed. The DEU never bothered with its own investigation, or even an after-action examination to determine what went wrong.

The police clear themselves of wrongdoing and a pending civil lawsuit has zero motivation effect on the drug unit. The task force is operating outside Constitutional boundaries with no internal guidance or effective oversight. Myrtle Beach-area drug warriors have no desire to clean up their act, and a large settlement paid by taxpayers is unlikely to result in a change of heart.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, drug task force, drugs, julian betton, no knock warrants, south carolina, warrants

Massachusetts State Police Promise Higher Standard For No-Knock Warrants; Immediately Break It

from the promising-change,-delivering-soundbites dept

No-knock warrants may have served a purpose when they first became a thing. It’s not as though law enforcement’s fear of evidence disappearing or a violent reaction to warrant service is completely unjustified. But no-knock warrants are being deployed extremely frequently, becoming the preferred method of warrant service any time drug sales are involved. The warrant requests are supposed to be subjected to a higher standard of review, but it’s devolved to the point where officers are requesting no-knock warrants simply because the residence they’re searching has locking doors and working toilets.

Now, cops and citizens are being killed or injured unnecessarily, simply because the SWAT team’s armored personnel carrier seems like a waste of money if it’s not deployed every six weeks or so. The higher standard is practically nonexistent, replaced by “upon information and belief” statements that work backwards from the desired form of warrant service.

Over in Massachusetts, state police pledged to hold themselves to a higher no-knock warrant standard after a botched raid of the wrong residence led to a civil rights lawsuit. The department said it would bring its no-knock requests directly to a judge, rather than whatever court clerk happened to be on hand when the request was made.

One year later, the state police appear to have made no changes at all, according to the Worcester Telegram’s investigation.

[A] T&G review of no-knock warrants in all 10 courts in Worcester County shows that of the 10 no-knock warrants issued to state police since 2016, only one was reviewed by a judge.

Brendan T. Keenan, first assistant clerk-magistrate in Worcester’s Central District Court, said last week he was never asked to accommodate the change.

“I read that in the paper,” he said of the pledge. “That’s the only place I heard it.”

Clerk-magistrates in Fitchburg and Leominster, the only other two courts that have issued no-knock warrants to state police since 2016, said they also had never been asked to kick the warrants up to a judge.

The higher standard the police promised ended up being no standard at all. And no standard at all is standard practice for many law enforcement agencies. The only defense offered for the department’s reneging on its judicial review standard is… well, it’s terrible. Apparently, going in-house is just as stringent as placing a no-knock warrant app in the hands of an impartial judge.

“There is a heightened sense of review on these types of warrants now,” Col. McKeon said April 15, noting all warrants are forwarded to the district attorney’s office for review.

There are very few prosecutors willing to turn down law enforcement requests. If anyone thinks a review by the DA’s office is somehow more stringent than a clerk-magistrate’s cursory glance, they probably work in a law enforcement agency’s PR department.

Clerks may have the word “magistrate” appended to their titles, but don’t let that fool you into thinking they’re only a small step down from actual judges.

Nine of the 10 no-knock warrants examined by the T&G were signed by assistant clerk-magistrates; in six of the cases, that person had no law degree.

A former judge with 16 years of experience says he knows why cops are bringing no-knock warrants to clerks: because judges will give warrant requests more scrutiny.

“This is the day-to-day bread and water of judges,” said Mr. Borenstein, adding that it is not unusual for police to eschew judicial review.

“There have been major studies done over the years, and one consistent thing about the studies is that police like to avoid judges,” he said. “They’d rather go to magistrates.”

The police maintain the promise they broke still makes the entire process perfectly legal. As they see it — in unofficial statements made in response to the investigation — going to clerks gives officers more flexibility. The lack of judicial rigor is supposedly offset by the list of internal policy requirements cops must follow when obtaining no-knock warrants, which includes performing zero due diligence before asking a clerk for their autograph.

There are no requirements that police conduct surveillance on a home or determine whether children live there prior to serving a no-knock warrant.

And in two of the cases examined, the no-knock warrants were used to seize marijuana — even as the state was holding a referendum to legalize personal possession and use. In other words, a drug that citizens felt could be safely legalized was treated as a threat so severe that warrant service could only be handled with a maximum amount of surprise and force.

Because of its unwillingness to voluntarily subject itself to higher standards, the Massachusetts State Police is setting itself up to be the recipient of additional civil rights and wrongful death lawsuits. It could have taken the small extra step to ensure no-knock warrants were subjected to a bit more judicial scrutiny, but obviously preferred to do things the old way. The easier way. The way that got the department sued.

That’s the real “standard” of law enforcement: the bare minimum. As defenders of the practice point out in the Telegram piece, running no-knock warrants past assistant clerk-magistrates rather than judges is “legally sufficient.” It’s not better for cops or better for citizens. It’s nothing more than ticking just enough boxes to avoid being punished by other arms of the state government.

Filed Under: massachusetts, no knock warrants, warrants

A Residence With Locking Doors And A Working Toilet Is All That's Needed To Justify A No-Knock Warrant

from the In-Every-Dream-Home,-a-SWAT-raid dept

No-knock warrants have become the strategy of first choice for many police departments. Most of these target those suspected of drug possession or sales, rather than the truly dangerous situations they should be reserved for. The rise in no-knock warrants has resulted in an increased number of deadly altercations. Cops have been shot in self-defense by residents who thought their homes were being invaded by criminals. Innocent parties have been wounded or killed because the element of surprise police feel is so essential in preventing the destruction of evidence puts cops — often duded up in military gear — into a mindset that demands violent reaction to any perceived threat. In these situations, the noise and confusion turns everything into a possible threat, even the motions of frightened people who don’t have time to grasp the reality — and severity — of the situation.

No-knock warrants are basically SWATting, with cops — rather than 13-year-old gamers — instigating the response. Judges should be holding any no-knock warrant request to a higher standard and demand more evidentiary justification for the extreme measure — especially considering the heightened probability of a violent outcome. But they don’t.

A Massachusetts court decision posted by the extremely essential FourthAmendment.com shows just how little it takes to obtain a no-knock warrant. The probable cause provided to obtain the no-knock warrant was ridiculous, but it wasn’t challenged by the magistrate who signed off on the request. What’s detailed here should raise concerns in every citizen.

The affidavit supporting the warrant contained the following representations: 1) the extensive training and experience in drug investigations, controlled purchases and arrests of the officer who made the affidavit, 2) the confidential informant’s report that the apartment for which a warrant was sought was “small, confined and private,” 3) the confidential informant’s report thatthe defendant “keeps his door locked and admits only people whom he knows,” 4) the fact that the defendant sold drugs to the informant only after arrangements were made by telephone, and 5) the officer’s assessment that, given the retail nature of the defendant’s operation and the fragile nature of the illegal drugs involved, “it would not be difficult for [the defendant] to destroy the narcotics if given the forewarning.”

In other words, if you have a “private” home with working toilets and locks and you don’t routinely allow complete strangers to wander around your home, you, too, could be subjected to a no-knock warrant. This description fits pretty much every person who lives in a residence anywhere. All it takes is an officer’s “upon information and belief” statement and a few assertions from a confidential informant, whose otherwise unreliable narration (if, say, he/she was facing charges in court) is routinely treated as infallible by cops and courts alike.

The appeals court may have pointed out how ridiculous this warrant application is, but its statements are far removed from the time and place the application was submitted, approved and served. So, the courts still provide an avenue of recourse, but this decision does nothing to prevent cops from using the same specious assertions to obtain no-knock warrants in the future.

In fact, this decision possibly makes the situation worse. The court notes that many of the assertions made by the police in support of the no-knock application aren’t solely applicable to the presumed destruction of evidence. The apartment’s “small size” would supposedly make it “easier” for the suspect to destroy evidence during the serving of a normal warrant. The court points out that the limited confines would also make it easier for officers to find and apprehend the suspect before such destruction could take place. It also points out that a locked door isn’t just a thing people use to keep cops out. They also use it to keep other criminals out, like burglars.

But in the end, the evidence obtained by the no-knock search remained unsuppressed. Even though the warrant application made a bunch of broad assertions that could conceivably cover every private residence, the defects in the paperwork couldn’t overcome the court’s willingness to cut the PD some slack.

Applying these principles to the present circumstances, we conclude that suppression is not warranted. The police did not act unilaterally; they properly applied for a warrant, requested a no-knock provision and submitted an affidavit setting forth all the available and relevant facts known to them. While we conclude as a matter of law that they did not ultimately provide sufficient basis for the issuance of the warrant in that form, the police did not act in bad faith, and the defendant makes no such claim. Having obtained the warrant, they observed its strictures.

The “good faith exception” triumphs again. Police officers don’t need to know if the law they’re trying to enforce is even on the books, nor do they have to provide actual probable cause to obtain a warrant. They just have to “reasonably” believe they’re in the right, and wait for a court to back up their beliefs. Faith-based policing means every citizen needs to follow the letter and spirit of wholly imaginary laws, and subject themselves to whatever powers law enforcement officers “reasonably believe” they have.

This decision changes nothing. In fact, it makes things worse for Massachusetts residents. Cops can still obtain warrants using almost nothing in the way of probable cause, and when challenged in court, rely on judges to uphold the belief that officers always “try their best” — even when it appears they barely tried at all.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, no knock warrants